The role of regional integration agreements as a determinant of the location of FDI has become an increasingly relevant issue for emerging economies. In Latin America, the largest effects are likely to be associated with the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). In this regard, there are a...

This document analyzes the results of a Web-based survey conducted by the Research Department to assess how the IDB is viewed by political and corporate leaders in the region. The questionnaire included 31 questions that compared the IDB to the IMF, World Bank, CAF, BCIE and CDB. The sample...

The paper presents a new database on sovereign debt in the Americas, describing the sources used and briefly discussing several methodological issues. The paper also highlights major trends in level and composition of public debt in the Americas, discussing debt dollarization in detail.

We infer determinants of Latin American hyperinflations and stabilizations by using the method of maximum likelihood to estimate a hidden Markov model that potentially assigns roles both to fundamentals in the form of government deficits that are financed by money creation and to destabilizing...

This Working Paper investigates the possible link between gender inequalities in the labour market and significant economic outcomes such as income growth, poverty and inequality indicators. Our analysis is based on microsimulations for eight Latin American countries. We consider four aspects of...

During the 1990s, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) were adopted by countries across Latin America as central elements of their poverty reduction strategies. Alongside other developments in the area of social assistance, CCTs represent an opportunity for countries to develop an integrated and...

This paper challenges the conventional view according to which disinflations in LAC-even from low and moderate peaks-have been carried out at no cost to output. After suggesting a new methodology that allows for long-lived effects and inflation inertia when measuring costs of disinflations,...

Latin American countries have always been characterised by relatively high levels of income inequality, even taking into account their degree of economic development. If such 'excess inequality' is combined with the fact that these are mostly middle-income and low-income countries, it can be...

El desempleo es uno de los fenómenos más temidos de nuestros tiempos. Pocos fenómenos económicos son reportados tan amplia y sistemáticamente por la prensa, y menos aún generan tal nivel de debate en la opinión pública. Hay razones para este nivel de interés. Los costos económicos de...

In this paper detailed information on the budget institutions of Latin American countries is collected. These institutions are classified on a hierarchical/collegial scale, as a function of the existence of constraints on the deficit and voting rules.