This is the first study that uniformly analyzes health perceptions in all of Latin America and tests in a systematic way their relation to economic conditions at the country, income group and individual levels. The study uses three types of health self-assessment questions: i) health...

This paper assesses the effects of different health conditions on happiness. Based on a large data set for Latin America, the effects of different conditions are examined across age, gender, and income cohorts. Anxiety and pain have stronger effects than physical problems, likely because people...

En este artículo se presenta una visión comparada de la formación de economistas en cinco países de América Latina. Para tal fin, se analizan la currícula, los libros de texto comúnmente utilizados, la dedicación de los profesores, los métodos de enseñanza, y el uso de tecnologías y...

The distance between perception and reality with respect to the social domains of life is often striking. Using survey data collected on Latin American countries, this paper provides an overview of the main empirical findings on the gaps between perception and reality in four social...

Este documento analiza los grandes cambios en las principales áreas de política económica estructural en América Latina entre 1985 y 2009 y presenta un conjunto de índices que intentan medir qué tan favorables son para el libre funcionamiento de los mercados las políticas comercial,...

This paper makes use of the 2006 Gallup World Survey, which includes opinions on satisfaction with various aspects of life in 130 countries. Although a very solid relationship is found between satisfaction and income (both across and within countries), raising doubts regarding the well-known...

Panel data for seven Latin American countries are used to assess the influence of public indebtedness on public investment in infrastructure in the period 1987-2001. Debt increases are associated with higher public infrastructure investment, an effect that is robust to the inclusion of many...

A growing number of cities around the world have established systems of monitoring the quality of urban life. Many of those systems combine objective and subjective information and attempt to cover a wide variety of topics. This paper introduces a simple method that takes advantage of both types...