This working paper has been commissioned by the Poverty Group, Bureau for Development Policy at UNDP, to identify the transmission mechanisms of the financial crisis from developed to developing countries and to provide broad policy recommendations at the national, global and regional level. The...

Latin American has the longest history of regional integration efforts in the developing world. This paper analyzes the experience of regional monetary cooperation in Latin America over the past three decades. This experience has been overall successful but also uneven, both in terms of country...

The current world economic crisis has hit Latin America very hard. Although financial conditions have deteriorated, particularly since September 2008, the financial shock has been less severe than during the two previous crises. Thanks to improvements in external balance sheets, there has been...

Spanish Abstract: Este ensayo analiza los retos del desarrollo latinoamericano a la luz de la historia y de los fuertes cambios recientes en el contexto económico undial. Muestra el mediocre desempeño económico de la región a partir de as reformas en comparación con el periodo de...

This paper synthesizes recent advances in the theoretical and empirical literature on capital controls. We start by observing that international capital flows have both benefits and costs, but some of these are not internalized by individual actors and thus constitute externalities. The...

The relation between the economy and equity has shown marked contrasts in Latin America over the past two decades. Increases in public spending have been reflected in advances in education, health and access to basic utilities. In contrast, the region has experienced weak labor market...

This paper argues that SDRs should become a more relevant instrument of international monetary cooperation. This requires transforming them into a pure reserve asset and the IMF into a fully SDR-funded institution. SDRs would then be issued counter-cyclically and treated as deposits of countries...