We examine how socio-political conflict in Bolivia has affected its economic performance since the 1970s. Such conflict includes strikes, demonstrations, road blockades, and conventional rent-seeking. Since conflict has costs, it diverts resources away from production, tends to reduce investment...

We examine the impact that financial development had on earnings inequality in Brazil in the 1980’s and 90’s. The empirical evidence, based on panel time series and time series data, shows that more broad access to financial and credit markets had a significant and robust effect in reducing...

This paper estimates the effects of external constraints on growth and investment in the Mexican economy, and how those effects have changed since the economic liberalization of the 1980s and the formation of NAFTA in 1994. Shocks to net financial inflows, world oil prices, the U.S. growth rate,...

We examine how socio-political conflict in Bolivia has affected its economic performance since the 1970s. Such conflict includes strikes, demonstrations, road blockades, and conventional rent-seeking. Since conflict has costs, it diverts resources away from production, tends to reduce investment...

This paper sets to analyze the dynamic feedback between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and economic growth—larger FDI promotes higher GDP, while higher GDP can be achieved with higher levels of FDI. We use panels and a sample of 19 Latin American countries to estimate a dynamic FDI and a...

El artículo examina las razones por las que la economía mexicana es una de las más gra¬vemente afectadas por la crisis financiera internacional. Para ello identifica los canales principales de transmisión de sus efectos de la crisis internacional y de qué forma inciden en las fortalezas y...

The economic history of Argentina presents one of the most dramatic examples of divergence in the modern era. What happened and why? This paper reviews the wide range of competing explanations in the literature and argues that, setting aside deeper social and political determinants, the various...

We investigate in this paper whether income growth has played any role on inequality in all nine young South American democracies during the period 1970-2007. The results, based on dynamic panel time-series analysis, robustly suggest that income growth has indeed played a progressive role in...

This paper investigates the possible reasons why many microfinance institutions (MFIs) have gradually experienced a decrease in the share of female borrowers in their portfolios over the last few years. We confirm that the share of women may be decreasing due to the growing dependence of the...

This article draws a parallel between rentier capitalism and what the author calls rentier developmentalism. This refers to the growing influence of rent seeking or DInRT sectors: Distribution, ICTn (that are non-tradable), Restaurant and Transportation & storage. Similar to rentier capitalism...