This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of institutional fragmentation and metropolitan coordination on urban productivity in Latin American cities. The use of night-time lights satellite imagery and high-resolution population data allow the use of a broader definition of...

Oil discoveries can constitute a major positive and exogenous shock to economic activity, but the resource curse hypothesis would suggest they might also be detrimental to growth over the long run. This paper utilizes a new methodology for estimating growth underperformance to examine the extent...

This paper brings together the main findings and policy implications of two recent World Bank regional reports on economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean: Araujo, Vostroknutova, Wacker and Clavijo, editions. (2016) and Araujo, Vostroknutova, Brueckner, Clavijo, and Wacker (2016). In...

The world economy is not what it used to be twenty years ago. For most of the 20th century, the world economy was characterized by developed (North) countries acting as 'center' to a 'periphery' of developing (South) countries. However, the recent rise of developing economies suggests the need...

As usual in this series, Chapter 1 reviews the configuration of global risks and assesses the outstanding short term opportunities and challenges facing the LAC region. We document the significant slowdown in economic activity across the region, and explore the possibility of this being the 'new...

The April 2015 LAC Semiannual Report covers the short-term prospects and provides an analysis of the external factors affecting the region's economic performance. The first chapter expands on LAC's economic outlook paying special attention to the global context and its effect on LAC's economic...

Latin America's historically low saving rates and sub-par growth performance raise the question of whether the region should save more to grow faster. Economists generally resist acknowledging a policy-exploitable causal connection going from saving to growth because domestic saving is perceived...

This paper assesses the impact of the rise of China on the trade of Latin American and Caribbean economies. The study proposes an index to measure the impact on trade, which suggests sizable effects, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Hondu