This study examines trends in school dropout at the upper secondary education level across Latin America over the past two decades, and attempts to identify factors influencing these rates. The methodology contributes to the existing literature by employing repeated cross sections of data to...

Social protection systems in Latin America have been transformed in the past two decades. Until the 1980s, those who were not covered by the social security arrangements available primarily in the urban formal sector received little public assistance beyond universal subsidies for some food or...

An adequate supply of infrastructure services has long been viewed by both academics and policy makers as a key ingredient for economic development. Over the past quarter-century, the retrenchment of Latin America's public sector from its dominant position in the provision of infrastructure, and...

An adequate supply of infrastructure services has long been viewed by both academics and policy makers as a key ingredient for economic development. Over the past quarter-century, the retrenchment of Latin America's public sector from its dominant position in the provision of infrastructure, and...

This paper studies the causes and consequences of informality and applies the analysis to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It starts with a discussion on the definition and measures of informality, as well as on the reasons why widespread informality should be of great concern. The...

Income inequality in Latin America ranks among the highest in the world. It can be traced back to the unequal distribution of assets (especially land and education) in the region. But the extent to which asset inequality translates into income inequality depends on the redistributive capacity of...

This paper evaluates the degree of consumption insurance enjoyed by Latin American and Caribbean countries, with respect to various reference areas, by estimating a parameter expressing the sensitivity of a country's consumption growth to a measure of idiosyncratic shocks to income. The paper...

This paper estimates the elasticity of substitution of U.S. imports using detailed trade data over the 1990-2003 period. The authors use a two-stage least squares framework in order to identify the elasticity parameter of interest. The authors use the elasticity estimates to assess the extent to...