This paper studies the impact of mining activity on socioeconomic outcomes in local communities in Peru. In the last two decades, the value of Peruvian mining exports has grown by fifteen times; and since a decade ago, one-half of fiscal revenues from mining have been devolved to local...

We revisit the link between poverty, the middle class and institutional outcomes using a newly developed cross-country panel dataset containing detailed information on the distribution of income and expenditures. When the size of the middle class increases (measured as the proportion of people...

Despite large deregulation efforts, informal economic activity still represents a large share of GDP in many developing countries. In this paper we look at incentives to reduce informal activity when capitalists in the formal sector regulate entry. We consider a dual economy with a formal sector...

The paper examines the link between poverty, the middle class and institutional outcomes using a new cross-country panel dataset on the distribution of income and expenditure. It uses an econometric methodology to gauge whether a larger middle class has a causal effect on policy and...

In the past three decades, emerging countries have gone through extensive decentralization reforms. Yet, there are no studies assessing quantitatively the relative importance of various factors known to affect the success of decentralization. This paper builds on a comprehensive dataset the...

Middle class values have long been perceived as drivers of social cohesion and growth. In this paper we investigate the relation between class (measured by the position in the income distribution), values, and political orientations using comparable values surveys for six Latin American...

More than a third of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean currently live in poverty. Will the region be able to simultaneously increase economic growth and reduce poverty given its scarce fiscal resources? The message of this paper is that the public policies needed to achieve these...

This paper compares for 13 Latin American countries the poverty and inequality impacts of cash transfer programs that are given to all children and the elderly (that is,"categorical"transfers), to programs of equal budget that are confined to the poor within each population group (that...

Middle class values have long been perceived as drivers of social cohesion and growth. This paper investigates the relation between class (measured by position in the income distribution), values, and political orientations using comparable values surveys for six Latin American countries. The...