Urban governance and development of informality in China and India / Arthur Acolin, Shahana Chattaraj, and Susan M. Wachter -- Comparative evidence on urban land-use regulation bureaucracy in developing countries / Paavo Monkkonen and Lucas Ronconi -- Urban land titling : lessons from a natural...

This paper assesses Brazil''s growth performance from a long-term perspective, using crosscountry and panel estimation techniques, building on the vast empirical literature on growth. The empirical evidence presented in this paper confirms that macroeconomic stability and several reforms have...

This paper develops a model of political regulation in which politicians set the regulated price in order to maximize electoral support by signaling to voters a pro-consumer behavior. Political incentives and welfare constraints interact in the model, yielding an equilibrium in which the real...

This paper provides an overview of full and partial allowance for corporate equity (ACE) tax systems in practice. In the recent past, ACE systems have been used in Austria, Croatia, and Italy. Brazil still applies a variant of such a system and Belgium introduced one this year. This paper...

Credit default swaps (CDS) provide the buyer with insurance against certain types of credit events by entitling him to exchange any of the bonds permitted as deliverable against their par value. Unlike bonds, whose risk spreads are assumed to be the product of default risk and loss rate, CDS are...

This paper investigates the factors behind the significant improvement in Brazil''s external accounts and wide fluctuations of the real exchange rate since the floating of the real in 1999. Particular attention is devoted to the strong appreciation of the real from 2003-05. Econometric estimates...

This paper presents empirical evidence on convergence of per capita output for regions within six large middle-income Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. It explores the role played by several exogenous sectoral shocks and differences in steady states...