Workers' remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries. However, little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality. Using a large cross-country panel dataset, the authors find that remittances in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have...

Two long-established stylized facts in the urban and development economics literatures are that: (a) a country's level of economic development is strongly positively correlated with its level of urbanization; and (b) a country's level of urbanization is strongly negatively correlated with the...

The objective of this paper is to study the evolution of the incidence and profile of nonstandard workers in selected countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe and Central Asia in the past two decades. The analysis of the profile of this group of workers focuses on three key...

This paper contributes to the methodological literature on the estimation of poverty lines for country poverty comparisons in Latin America and the Caribbean. The paper exploits a unique, comprehensive data set of 86 up-to-date urban official extreme and moderate poverty lines across 18...

Countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are reforming their education systems to add more hours to the school day. This paper examines the evidence on the relationship between instructional time and student learning, reviewing 19 studies that measure the effects of longer school...

This paper presents a technical efficiency analysis of container ports in Latin America and the Caribbean using an input-oriented stochastic frontier model. A 10-year panel is employed with data on container throughput, port terminal area, length of berths, and number of cranes available in 67...

This paper investigates the interaction between corruption and governance at the sector level. A simple model illustrates how both an increase in regulatory autonomy and privatization may influence the effect of corruption. The interaction is analyzed empirically using a fixed-effects estimator...

This paper studies the governance structure of state-owned enterprises in the water and electricity sectors of Latin America and the Caribbean. Through a unique dataset, the paper compares 44 leading state companies of the region based on an aggregate measure of corporate governance and six...