While effective industrial policy requires close cooperation between government and business, there is little agreement on what makes that cooperation work best. This paper analyzes institutional arrangements for public-private cooperation and the character of private sector representation....

O retorno do Estado desenvolvimentista no Brasil suscita revelações históricas e contrastes comparativos. A principal diferença contemporânea é que o desenvolvimentismo e a política industrial estão sendo definidos e implementados em um contexto político muito mais aberto e...

Over the past 30 years, democratic freedoms and competitive electoral processes have taken hold as never before in Latin America. How Democracy Works takes a detailed look, from an institutional perspective, at each of the main actors on the policymaking stage in Latin America, emphasizing the...

This report examines the quality of public policies in Latin America and the Caribbean after more than a decade of political and economic reform. A wide variety of examples and case studies are presented in an analytical framework to help explain why policies that work in certain institutional...

This paper studies a possible link between two trends that have affected the labor market over the last decade: increases in wrongful termination litigation and increasing frequency of mass layoffs. We model the displacement strategy of a firm faced with concave displacement costs and employees...

Few of the current major efforts to improve urban schools adequately appreciate the extent to which the problematic social climate of urban schools can undermine the implementation of even very good ideas. Thus, program after program comes and goes with little lasting impact. This paper uses...

This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate cohort changes in earnings trajectories. Among male workers turning 21 before 1980, we find that more than six in ten (60%) of all male workers and seven in ten (71%) of college-educated male workers attained earnings levels by age 30 that were at...

A randomized experiment of Comer's School Development Program was conducted in 23 middle schools in Prince George's County, Maryland. It showed that Comer schools implemented some of the program's central elements better than control schools, but not all or even most of them. This shortfall in...

Based on a case study of a manufacturing plant, this paper addresses weaknesses in the way that new structuralist theories and the literature on sex segregation in occupations treat barriers to womenÕs mobility. I examine the forces that prevent sex integration in occupations and the reasons...

Studies that attempt to measure the impact of neighborhoods on children's outcomes are susceptible to bias because families choose where to live. As a result, the effect of family unobservables, such as the importance parents place on their children's welfare, and other unobservables that are...