A growing number of cities around the world have established systems for monitoring the quality of urban life. Many of those systems combine objective information with subjective opinions and cover a wide variety of topics. This book assesses a method that takes advantage of both types of...

This book presents a set of studies on contemporary discrimination in Latin America that takes advantage of these new tools by focusing on social interactions that range from cooperation, group formation, and the impact of migration in poor families to specific markets such as housing and labor....

This paper follows an income-based, time-dependence approach to measure social mobility in Uruguay between 1982 and 2010. The paper finds that social mobility in Uruguay is considerable and reports evidence suggesting that this mobility is greater within cohorts of groups, such as those defined...

This paper examines the effect of bank credit on employment formalization in Uruguay. Using a difference-in-differences methodology proposed by Catão, Pagés and Rosales (2011), the paper finds that financial deepening decreases informality, especially in more financially dependent sectors. The...

This paper analyzes various dimensions of the quality of life in Montevideo. The paper finds that satisfaction with various public goods and services at the neighborhood level play a minor role in the overall reported well-being of individuals and in the satisfaction of life domains, such as...

This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization on labor and capital gross flows and productivity in the Uruguayan manufacturing sector. Uruguay opened its economy in the presence of -at least initially- strong unions and structurally different industry concentration levels. Higher...

In this paper the author exploits a natural experiment to study the effects of granting formal property rights on health for households in Uruguay. Titling could improve health outcomes through various channels: housing investment, income or family cohesion. The author found that titling...

El presente trabajo estudia el mercado hipotecario de viviendas en Uruguay. El principal operador del mercado es el Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay (BHU), una institución estatal que concentra más de 80% del total de los créditos. Esta institución se ha visto en dificultades financieras, lo...

Unequal income distribution in Latin America and the Caribbean is linked to unequal distributions of (human and physical) assets and differential access to markets and services. These circumstances, and the accompanying social tensions, need to be understood in terms of traditional fragmenting...

This paper reviews and assesses some of the Productive Development Policies currently being implemented in Uruguay. Three horizontal and three vertical policies are considered in light of the market and public failures they attempt to address and minimize. Horizontal policies comprise...