One of the particular features of poor countries’ economies is their volatility, due mostly to their dependence on commodities. The paper shows that this volatility is a prime factor behind the debt crises of the poorest countries. It advocates the adoption by donors of a new lending...

This paper presents a new data set on human capital. It is based upon data released at the OECD for a subgroup of 38 member and non-member countries, and an effort performed at the Development Centre to expand this data set to other developing countries. The key to our methodology is to minimise...

The paper attempts to explain why single factor explanations of the poverty of nations are usually found to be unsatisfactory. Middle- and low-income countries excluding sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, have an income per head which stands at about one third of the rich countries’ income per...

Raising manufacturing productivity is of central importance to the developing world and an essential element of policy making. <I>Overcoming Barriers to Competitiveness</I> is about establishing the most reliable analysis of manufacturing productivity possible and helping policy makers set their...</i>

The paper develops the view that the perspective on the HIPC initiative is distorted by the fact that -contrary to the Brady deal itself- it lacks all perspective on the “market value” of the debt which is written down. The appropriate “market value” is one that takes account of the risk...

The report argues that aid volatility is an important source of volatility for the poorest countries. Following a method already applied by the Agence Française de Développement, the report argues that loans to LICs should incorporate a floating grace period, which the country could draw upon...

The case for a natural resource curse is based on the argument that in the absence of challenges, there is no progress. Is South America cursed by its natural resources? Does China’s rapid penetration of the region renew the region’s comparative advantage in natural resources? Does South...

GDP per capita in Latin America has been falling behind high-income countries and other benchmarks for decades and the region’s mediocre growth performance is one of the main reasons why poverty reduction, and living standards more generally, in the region is well below that observed in peer...

This paper analyses fiscal policy for several economies in Latin America, from the early nineties to the 2009 crisis. We present original estimates of cyclically-adjusted public revenues for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay implementing the standardised...

This paper combines development and growth accounting exercises with economic theory to estimate the relative importance of total factor productivity and the accumulation of factors of production in the economic development performance of Latin America. The region’s development performance is...