This working paper advances research on inequality with unique, new data on income distribution in 61 countries, including 20 Latin American countries, to explore the effects of political parties on redistribution. First, consistent with a central, but still contested, assumption of the...

Ecuador's current political economy is largely a product of the boom that took place in the country's oil sector in the early 1970s. The pressure of heightened revenue flows created an oil-exporting factional democracy, and a dichotomy between policies focused on minimizing the pitfalls of...

The Bank expanded its housing finance activities in the 1990s, shifting its support toward sector reforms that increase the capacity of housing finance and delivery mechanisms to cater to the needs of low-income households. The present publication examines Bank experience in housing, draws...

This paper compares the history of tax incentives in seven Latin American countries. It is an attempt to understand why countries enact tax incentive legislation; how countries measure the costs and benefits of such legislation; how such costs and benefits are viewed by the public; and what...

This report, prepared by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu transfer pricing specialists with the funding of the IDB, compares the transfer pricing regulations in the OECD guidelines, and in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela.

This paper analyzes the role of fiscal incentives in developing countries and provides a theoretical evaluation of benefits and costs of certain taxes. It also reviews the most notable characteristics of tax incentives frequently granted in Latin America are revised. Special attention is paid to...

This working paper contains a review and analysis of environmental policy tools in Latin America. It contains a review of the instruments themselves and their properties are discussed in both static and dynamic contexts. The report brings together the institutional and more narrowly economic...

The Dominican Republic invests a considerable amount of public resources in transfer and subsidy programs with the main objective of redistributing income to and subsidizing consumption of the poor. This study measures the effectiveness with which publicly-financed transfers redistribute income....

This paper is a review of the fiscal system of Belize. The emphasis of the study is on the revenue system in terms of its design, administration and its effectiveness in revenue mobilization. Belize is facing a critical public sector deficit situation, but its revenue system, although somewhat...

As the globalization of the world economy proceeds apace, Colombia must cope with an increasingly competitive international economic environment. The need to compete for highly mobile international capital is an essential component of the fiscal landscape in all countries in today's global...