We argue that societies sometimes choose not to enforce the law to gain “flexibility”. Especially developing countries face a dilemma between discretion and commitment to only partially-contingent rules. Rules are good for incentives, but discretion may be more “flexible”. We embed this...

The goal of this paper is to present the simulation model used in a research on the macroeconomic effects of the law 16.713 that reforms the Uruguayan social security system. It is a version of the overlapping generation models that have been extensively used for the analysis of fiscal and...

The purpose of this paper is to serve as an input in the revision of the evaluation guidelines of the Department of Economics FCS - UDELAR (dECON). With this aim, we report on what is taken into account in academic evaluation around the world, and which are the most frequently used methods of...

The goal in the present paper is twofold, to shed some light on endogenous dynamic of the welfare states, and to provide a procedure to select among several equilibria. To this end, a dynamic model is presented, in which private agents are assumed to be "locked" to current decisions for a while....

Coverage of contributory pension programmes has been quite disappointing in Latin America in the aftermath of the reforms. The question thus arises as to whether non-contributory programmes could fill the gap. Uruguay is atypical in this region in that the proportion of the elderly receiving...