Introduction [or giving Latin America's majority a fair chance] -- A dozen equity tools -- Rule-based fiscal discipline -- Smoothing booms and busts -- Social safety nets that trigger automatically -- More taxes on the rich and better spending on the rest -- Giving small businesses a chance --...

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...

This paper discusses the ways in which macroeconomic developments can put stress on banks, and in extreme cases lead to banking crises. There are many ways in which this can occur, and no specific mechanism is endorsed. These macroeconomic causes of bank vulnerability and crisis have important...