Although hard to measure, informality is by all accounts high in Latin America: about half of the region’s working population can be considered informal. In Mexico, the only Latin American country that belongs to the OECD, up to 60 per cent of non-agricultural workers – almost 22 million...

China’s trade impact on Latin America is positive via an export boom and indirectly better terms of trade. Its emergence is also a wake up call for the region: more reforms are needed, especially in infrastructure, in order to maintain Latin America’s comparative advantage. The Chinese...

Households in the Black Sea Economic Co-operation (BSEC) and Central Asia (CA) regions have adopted coping strategies to withstand negative income shocks during the transition. The most common strategies include family and community support, emigration, and a wide range of activities in the...

The ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have created one of the most dynamic developing regions. They have unveiled the Blueprint for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) to achieve a “single market” by 2015. More recently, the full ratification of the ASEAN...

Have you ever wondered how many women are in paid employment compared to men? We know they get unequal wages, but just how unequal is their pay? Meanwhile, who are the managers, and what is their gender makeup? Are women and men entering the higher levels of state in equal numbers?

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been one of the principal beneficiaries of the liberalisation of capital flows over recent decades, and now constitutes the major form of capital inflow for many developing countries, including low-income ones like Chad, Mauritania, Sudan and Zambia. But while...

Latin American Countries vary widely in their institutional capacity to conduct economic policy analysis. Capacity for policy analysis is a necessary condition for economic reform but capacity for implementation is also needed. The point of contact between these two capacities - to analyse and...

The quality of local corporate governance is critically important for the success of long-tem development efforts throughout the developing world today.

Risk-based public debt management and liquid domestic bond markets are important mutually reinforcing strategies for emerging financial markets and developing countries in general.

Technological change and organisational advancements have made possible the greater participation of developing country producers in international trade, in a wide range of goods and services. However, firms based in industrial countries often determine the scope for insertion and upgrading of...