This paper finds that shocks to net financial inflows, world oil prices, the U.S. growth rate, and the lagged real exchange rate explain most of the fluctuations in Mexico’s annual growth since 1979. The paper also estimates how the effects of these external constraints have changed since...

After a decade of economic reforms that dramatically altered the structure of economies in Latin America, making them more open and more competitive, and a decade of substantial increases in public spending on education, health and other social programs in virtually all countries, poverty and...

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...