This article challenges recent findings that democracy has sizable effects on economic growth. As extensive political science research indicates that economic turmoil is responsible for causing or facilitating many democratic transitions, the paper focuses on this endogeneity concern. Using a...

We conducted two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the impact of government-guaranteed loans offered by the Chilean and Colombian governments. The public funds of these programs greatly expanded following the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and offered loans to Micro, Small and...

This paper revisits the relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth by addressing the endogeneity issue stemming from reverse causality and unobserved factors that has plagued previous extensive literature on this subject. In our approach, we use the Geographic Fragmentation...

Tax policy is among the most common and relevant instruments in the toolkit of policy-makers when thinking about promoting growth, yet there is not compelling evidence regarding its effect in Latin American countries. Using a variety of approaches, we estimate the effects on growth of the most...

Public-private collaboration in productive development policy in Costa Rica frequently takes the form of policy co-governance: an autonomous institution in charge of policy for a particular economic sector is created, with a board of directors comprising representatives from both the public and...

This Working Paper analyzes the institutions that shape public-private collaboration for the design and implementation of productive development policies in Colombia. These policies are increasingly designed in the context of formal institutions and venues, with public-private collaboration...

This Working Paper provides an in-depth analysis of public-private collaboration (PPC) in Chilean productive development policies (PDPs) through five case studies under two specific polices: the Technology Consortia Program and the National Cluster Policy. The analysis is based on a set of more...

This paper presents an integrated overview of the literature linking institutions, financial development and economic growth. From the large body of research on institutional development, the paper first selects those contributions that make it possible to study the role of institutional...

This paper explores the link between Brazil's political institutions and its disappointing productivity and growth in recent decades. Although political institutions provide the president with incentives and the instruments to pursue monetary stability and fiscal discipline they simultaneously...