This report examines the quality of public policies in Latin America and the Caribbean after more than a decade of political and economic reform. A wide variety of examples and case studies are presented in an analytical framework to help explain why policies that work in certain institutional...

This report examines the quality of public policies in Latin America and the Caribbean after more than a decade of political and economic reform. A wide variety of examples and case studies are presented in an analytical framework to help explain why policies that work in certain institutional...

This paper presents a new dataset on electoral systems and outlines its potential uses in further research exploring the connections between electoral systems and economic outcomes. The dataset provides indicators of the degree to which individual politicians can further their careers by...

This paper presents a model in which trade is motivated both by preference for variety and comparative advantages. This framework is used to analyze the welfare implications of trading blocs among countries with different endowments with and without transportation costs. This paper was prepared...

Although the region remains highly centralized, the tendency toward decentralization is quite strong. Not only is a larger portion of the general government budget executed from the subnational government level, the autonomy that these governments have in deciding how much to spend and what to...

The Research Department of the IDB (RES) performs innovative, comparative research on the development issues of greatest concern to the region today. It generates a wide variety of products based on this research and disseminates them to three principal audiences: the Bank, policymakers and the...

This volume honors Raúl Prebisch's contributions to economic thought and uses his 1970 report Change and Development: Latin America's Great Task as a point of departure for analyzing trends in the region in the 1970s and 1980s. This volume comprises a collection of the papers presented at the...

The 2007 Report on Economic and Social Progress in Latin America analyzes the nature and evolution of sovereign debt in Latin America and discusses the policies that can be followed by countries and international financial institutions (IFIs) to reduce the vulnerabilities associated with it....

Latin American experts demonstrate how market-friendly measures in key policy areas can promote greater equity and efficiency. By identifying win-win strategies, the authors challenge the conventional wisdom that there is always a tradeoff between these two objectives. This volume shows how...