We document changes in income and earnings inequality in the five Central American countries from the early 1990s to 2009. In the 1990s Costa Rica had the most equal distribution of income in Central America, and one of the most equal distributions of income in Latin America. At the other...

This exercise tries to be the first approach in order to understand the overall feedback effects of price path over optimal depletion rate in natural gas market in Bolivia. The simulations attempt to reproduce year-by-year evolution of natural gas depletion. While the initial conditions,...

This paper takes stock with the results of utility privatization in Bolivia. This paper deals with the process of structural reforms in this country and the specific results that have to date been accomplished in the electricity industry. It is mostly interested in exploring whether the...

This discussion paper looks at the Bolivian decentralization model. The objective of Bolivian decentralization is to consolidate the process of popular participation, and to promote regional economic development by means of a more equitable distribution of national income and improved...

We examine the impact that financial development had on earnings inequality in Brazil in the 1980's and 90's. The empirical evidence, based on panel time series and time series data, shows that more broad access to financial and credit markets had a significant and robust effect in reducing...

Trade-related characteristics have only been recently started to be included in empirical studies analysing the determinants of the financial constraints faced by firms. A result broadly shared by these studies is that exporting firms tend to be those less financially constrained. In this paper...

In many developing countries, there does not exist a time series of nationally representative household budget or income surveys, while there often are surveys of regions as well as nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) which lack information on incomes. This makes an...

We examine the impact of inflation on financial development in Brazil and the data available permit us to cover the period between 1985 and 2002. The results?based initially on time-series and then on panel time-series data and analysis, and robust for different estimators and financial...