Empirical work suggests the presence of a public sector wage premium, the reasons for which are investigated in this paper. The results demonstrate a higher premium paid to women and premium decreases concurrent with skills. Job security undermines the incentive to work hard and forces the...

This paper exploits a rich collection of household surveys to investigate the wage differential between the public and private sectors in 17 Latin American countries during the 1980s and 1990s. The paper also studies how the sector of employment affects the gender wage gap. The paper finds very...

The future of structural reforms in Latin America is under discussion. The purpose of this document is to synthesize the facts and opinions that underlie this debate. The first section shows that although the reform process has not ground to a halt, it has been incomplete and uneven, both across...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of state-owned banks and also presents some new results and a robustness analysis. The paper shows that state-owned banks located in developing countries have fiscal costs because they are characterized by lower returns than...

According to recent research, external factors and political governance considerations are key determinants of capital flows in Latin America. We postulate that corporate governance is a crucial determinant as well. We show that while the region is characterized by relatively low levels of...

Spreads on sovereign bonds are at an all-time low, at least since the current era of emerging economy bond markets began in the 1990s. This paper examines the current state of the international and domestic bond markets and asks whether the current favorable trends will constitute a durable...

We analyze the way in which Latin American countries have adjusted to commodity terms of trade (CTOT) shocks in the 1970-2007 period. Specifically, we investigate the degree to which the active management of international reserves and exchange rates impacted the transmission of international...