There is a growing recognition that global warming is a problem, but little attention has been paid to the likely impact at the country level, especially in the developing world. The stakes for world agriculture, with special attention to China, India, Brazil, and the poor countries of the...

Several European countries face challenges reminiscent of those faced by the emerging economies of Latin America. The economic booms in some peripheral Euro-zone countries financed by large capital inflows; the credit and asset price booms and then the busts including Sudden Stops in capital...

In the years preceding the international debt crisis of the 1980s, international banks displayed a growing enthusiasm for lending to Mexico and other developing countries. During this period, Mexico's development and commercial banks got heavily involved in intermediating foreign finance with...

Annotated presentation made at the conference “Hacia una Mayor Competitividad e Integración de América Latina y el Caribe: la contribución de la banca de desarrollo”,on the occasion of the ALIDE Annual Meeting, Asunción, Paraguay, 19-20 May 2011. The paper describes first how regional...

This paper reviews the nature of central bank involvement in 26 episodes of financial disturbance and crises in Latin America from the mid-1990s onwards. It finds that, except in a handful of cases, large amounts of central bank money were used to cope with large and small crises alike. Pouring...

In most Latin American countries, income inequality rose steadily during the 1980s and 1990s, and declined from 2002 to 2007. This paper analyzes the factors that could explain the changes in income inequality from 1990 to 2007, by focusing on external shocks and changes in domestic policies....

Over the past 25 years, a variety of Neoliberal reforms were introduced. Instead of growth, stability, and the narrowing of income gaps, however, we have seen stagnation, volatility, and increased inequality. The paper examines the theory that justified these policies, describes an alternative...

In the course of tapping into external funding sources, innovators frequently encounter binding and insurmountable financing constraints, prompting them to discontinue, postpone or altogether abandon some of their innovative efforts, a key source of their growth and survival. This is even more...

The financial crisis that ongoing in 2008 had relocated the power centers from the developed countries to the emerging ones. China, Brazil, India and Russia would become recognized powers of the world in only one decade from now on. In the last 3 years, the governments of the most important...

The debate around retrenchment of pension systems became really popular in the 1990’s after the pioneering experience of Chile in 1981.The disastrous outcomes of the Chilean reform were widely known by the 2000’s although no relevant steps backwards were taken. This paper analyses...