Over the last decade, Chile has undertaken remarkable reforms and transferred publicly owned utilities to the private sector either by selling the assets or through concession agreements. Because of the reforms the country has been able to attract private participation in the provision of public...

Between 1860 and 1950, railroads in Chile were synonym of modernization, integration, and economic development. By the 1970s railroads were bankrupt and socially discredited, surviving out of government subsidies. By 2000, passenger services had disappeared but private sector freight operations...

This paper asks the question as to whether the choice of the exchange rate regime matters for post-conflict economic recovery and macro stabilization. Though an important aspect of the macroeconomic agenda for post-conflict, it has however, been largely ignored by the literature. We identify...

During the past two decades, Latin American countries have made pioneering efforts in reforming infrastructure services. The "first generation of reforms" encompassed widespread privatization, deregulation and restructuring of the provision of energy, water, transport and telecommunications...

This paper reviews the design and operation of the Chilean fiscal rule in the past 30 years. Using different empirical approaches, we assess its impact on fiscal procyclicality, public debt, and public investment. While there has been substantial progress in building a modern institutional...

Generating sustained growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most pressing challenges in global development. As the region needs foreign assistance to jump start its development, foreign aid becomes crucial. However, aid booms can also lead to exchange rate overvaluation curtailing exports...

This paper presents policy- and outcome-based ways of measuring the progress of market-oriented reforms in both traditional areas of first-generation reform and the areas of institutional reform that have been emphasized lately. These policy areas are the domestic financial system; international...

The research addresses three methodological questions that are central to effective exchange rate and macroeconomic management: what are the determinants and how to model the real exchange rate (RER), how to estimate its equilibrium level, and how to quantify the likely impact of misalignment on...

The importance of separating secular from seasonal movements in macroeconomic data cannot be understated. For policy purposes, filtering the data is of paramount importance both to analyse macroeconomic fluctuations and to model and quantify the responses of the economy to policy shocks. Despite...