This study uses text mining techniques on almost 900 presidential "state-of-the-union" --type speeches from 10 Latin American countries from 1819 to 2016. The paper documents a sharp increase in recent decades in references to poverty and inequality. The study's long-term view shows that the way...

Although there is wide recognition of the negative consequences of policy volatility for countries' long-term economic growth, there is limited empirical work on this subject. One of the reasons is the difficulty of measuring policy volatility over long periods of time, especially in developing...

The impact of urban form on economic performance and quality of life has been extensively recognized. The studies on urban form have focused in developed countries; only a few cities in developing countries have been studied. This paper utilizes nighttime lights imagery and information on street...

This paper examines the linkages between urban form and city productivity, using alternative metrics for urban form and applying them to a comprehensive sample of Latin American cities. Although most of the literature has concentrated on the effects of population density (compact versus...

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...

This paper examines the impact of the quality of the business environment as well as the monitoring capacity of the tax agency on firms' tax evasion and production decisions. First, the paper uses firm-level data for 30 African and Latin American countries to show that tax evasion and...