We simulate the budget of the main pension institution of the country, the Banco de Previsión Social (BPS), from 1995, the year the reform was passed, to 2050, when the new system should be mature. We perform several sensitivity analyses to evaluate which are the key exogenous variables and...

The authors show that labor market policies and institutions affect the effectiveness of economic reform programs. They compare annual growth rates across 119 countries, using data from 449 World Bank adjustment credits and loans between 1980 and 1996. The results indicate that countries with...

The paper analyses the efficiency and the distributional effects of eliminating a tariff in a protected sector, in a Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade with costs of adjustment. The tariff can be eliminated at the onset or after a while. In case of postponing it the government may pre-announce the...

Benevolent governments lacking commitment ability provide too much insurance, if opportunistic private agents free ride on the government´s concern and exert too little effort expecting government assistance. Yet, the costs of implementing the transfer policy work as a commitment device,...

This paper shows that labor market policies and institutions have an impact on the effectiveness of economic reform programs. Countries with relatively 'rigid' labor markets experienced deeper recessions before adjustment and slower recoveries afterwards. Minimum wages and mandatory benefits are...

In Uruguay, like in other countries in Latin America, the management of the public social security programs has been frequently criticized. These programs have shown financial problems and high evasion and have been slow to adjust to the demographic changes. I argue in this paper that the poor...

We present in this paper an estimation of the distributive effects of the reform of the Uruguayan pensions system initiated in 1995. The estimation is based on simulations done with an overlapping generations model adapted and calibrated to the Uruguayan reality. We compute the expected changes...

This paper provides an overview of the pro-market reform process in eight Latin American countries, based on country studies undertaken within the Understanding Reform project of the Global Development Network. After a brief presentation of the reform in Latin America and in the eight countries...