Starting in the 1980s, China’s economic growth has been characterized by a rapid acceleration. Even though the Asian financial crisis caused China’s growth to decelerate somewhat, the very high growth rates that picked up again in 2000 have more than doubled per-capita income and total GDP...

"State capacity is exceptionally low in Latin America, even when compared to other former colonies. This paper analyzes four possible factors that could potentially explain this troubling feature: political inequality, economic inequality, interstate conflict and civil war. With the exception of...

Using official employment surveys for 45 advanced economies and Latin American countries, this paper shows that the positive cross-country correlation between business size and GDP per capita is tighter than previously found using firm-level datasets and finds a close negative business size-Gini...

The relationship between firms and inequality has been a focus of recent attention globally. This chapter summarizes basic facts about this relationship for Latin America. Unlike advanced economies where superstar firm growth has prompted concerns over disproportionate income growth at the top,...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of fiscal policy, in particular the accumulation of government debt. The authors examine three possible determinants of fiscal balances: opportunistic behavior by policymakers, heterogeneous fiscal preferences of either voters or...