This book breaks away from the exclusively macroeconomic focus of development studies to bring the spotlight to the place where decisions are made: households. Complementing this microeconomic view with an aggregate approach, this volume uncovers clues to declining fertility, skyrocketing female...

Fiscal policy in Latin America has been guided primarily by short-term liquidity targets whose observance was taken as the main exponent of fiscal prudence, with attention focused almost exclusively on the levels of public debt and the cash deficit. Very little attention was paid to the effects...

This book examines poverty as a structural problem caused by the way economic systems operate. It poses a simple question: Why do poor people earn less? Case studies in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru find the poor caught in a vicious circle. They lack sufficient access to...

This book looks at the potential and the limits of policies to promote entrepreneurship as an important vehicle for social mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as steps to remove the constrains that hamper entrepreneurship. This volume assesses the relevant literature on...

This book presents a regional overview of gender and ethnic disparities in labor earnings during this last turn of the century. After this introduction, chapter 2 presents the methodology adopted by the book and the data sources employed. Chapter 3 then examines education in the region,...

Traditionally, the concept of quality of life has been viewed through objective indicators. Beyond Facts looks at quality of life through a new lens, namely, the perceptions of millions of Latin Americans. Using an enhanced version of the recently created Gallup World Poll that incorporates...

This study examines the impact of Superémonos, a conditional transfer program in Costa Rica, which provides poor families with a subsidy for the purchase of food conditional upon children regularly attending school. Using three different empirical techniques -simple comparison of mean outcomes,...

This paper presents evidence on the relationship between economic shocks to relative male wages and changes in household consumption in Mexico during the 1990s, which is a period characterized by high volatility. In addition to performing this type of analysis for Mexico for the first time, the...

It has become common wisdom amongst monetary policy professionals that central banks in Latin America should adopt inflation targeting. Pure inflation targeting implicitly assumes a social loss welfare function dependent on only inflation. In this working paper, using subjective well-being...

Following the 1994 financial crisis, the rate of saving of the Mexican economy fell from 21.7 percent to 19.8 percent of GDP. The decline was associated with a reduction in the rate of external saving from 6.9 to 0.5 percent between 1994 and 1995. The overall reduction was not more dramatic...