This paper presents an evaluation of the so-called Washington Consensus economic policies in the case of Ecuador during the eighties and the nineties in a game theoretical framework. In a multi-period game, in which it acts as Stackelberg leader, the government minimizes a quadratic loss...

Income inequality in Colombia has declined since the early 2000s but remains very high by international standards. Income dispersion largely originates from the labour market, which is characterised by a still high unemployment rate, a pervasive informal sector and a wide wage dispersion...

In the wake of the food, fuel and financial shocks, a fourth wave of the global economic crisis began to sweep across developing countries in 2010: fiscal austerity. Serving as an update of earlier research by UNICEF, this working paper: (i) examines the latest IMF government spending...

This working paper examines the extent to which fiscal consolidation is occuring in 2010-11 among 126 low and middle-income countries, and the potential risks for children and poor households at a time when economic recovery is fragile and uneven. Using fiscal projection data published by the...

A copula is best described, as in Joe (1997), as a multivariate distribution function that is used to bind each marginal distribution function to form the joint. The copula parameterises the dependence between the margins, while the parameters of each marginal distribution function can be...

In this paper, we explore ways of combining experimental data and non-experimental methods to estimate the differential effects of components of training programs. We show how data from a multi-site experimental evaluation in which subjects are randomly assigned to any treatment versus a control...