Financial crises are historically associated with the “4 deadly D’s”: Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues dragged down, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debt piles up rating downgrades follow. For the most fortunate countries, the...

The paper presents an empirical analysis of the innovative activities of business groups in Latin America. It compares the innovativeness of group-affiliated firms (GAFs) and standalone firms (SAFs), and it investigates how country-specific institutional factors – financial, legal, and labor...

This paper seeks to provide a systematized framework for the main ideas that have been developed by ECLAC concerning the effects that market-led reforms have had on labour, financial and technology markets. In order to explore these questions further, a research project has been undertaken by...

This article reassesses the classic period of Import-Substituting Industrialisation (ISI) in Brazil between 1945 and 1979. New data presented here show that Brazilian industry achieved significant labour productivity growth during the post-war years and became more technologically sophisticated,...

As by product of economic growth, jobs are indeed transformational. In other words, efficiency increases as workers get better at what they do (as more productive jobs appear and less productive one disappear). In fact societies flourish as jobs bring together people from different ethnic and...

The U.S financial crisis started in October 2005. The level of new home starts would have replaced the total owner occupied housing stock in 37 years. Much faster than desirable. Mortgage interest rates also went up in same month. In 2006 mortgage lending went on unabated, but housing values did...

This work is a PhD dissertation, written at the Department of Economics, McGill University. The thesis offers a new framework for inflation as a process of restructuring. Contrary to existing theories of inflation, which tend to take structure and institutions as given for the purpose of...

After a decade of economic and political reforms that dramatically altered the structure of economies in Latin America, poverty and high inequality remain deeply entrenched. Integration into the global economy in the 1990s brought increased prosperity only to a small minority of households in...

In Latin America, privatization started earlier and spread farther and more rapidly than in almost any other part of the world. More, and larger, firms were sold, and more proceeds were raised. Despite positive microeconomic results, privatization is highly and increasingly unpopular in the...

This paper examines the effects of Chile Solidario programme on labour market outcomes from a gender perspective. Chile Solidario was implemented as the main anti-poverty programme in Chile in 2002. The purpose of this conditional cash transfer is to provide poor families with auxiliary social...