Latin American experts demonstrate how market-friendly measures in key policy areas can promote greater equity and efficiency. By identifying win-win strategies, the authors challenge the conventional wisdom that there is always a tradeoff between these two objectives. This volume shows how...

The authors of this volume analyze the policies that led to East Asia's economic success, including those affecting human resources, savings, the financial sector, trade and institutions, and examine the lessons these policies carry for Latin America. The genesis of this book was an...

This book addresses questions of international trade policy and the relationship between growth, distribution, and human resource development in the Latin American region.Abstract: Este libro presenta un análisis de cuestiones sobre comercio internacional y la relación entre crecimiento,...

This paper tests the sensitivity of poverty indexes to the choice of adult equivalence scales, assumptions about the existence of economies of scale in consumption, methods for treating missing and zero incomes, and different adjustments to handle income misreporting. We also perform sensitivity...

Experience from the 1990s has led to a poverty reduction agenda that, on top of promoting economic growth, addresses ingrained inequalities, institutional failures, social barriers, and risks.Abstract: Este documento fue comisionado por la Red de Reducción de la Pobreza y la Protección Social...

How much redistribution and poverty reduction is being accomplished in Latin America through social spending, subsidies, and taxes? Standard fiscal incidence analyses applied to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay using a comparable methodology yields the following results....

Inequality in Mexico rose between 1989 and 1994 and declined between 1994 and 2010. We examine the role of market forces (demand and supply of labour by skill), institutional factors (minimum wages and unionization rate), and public policy (cash transfers) in explaining changes in inequality. We...

We perform the first comprehensive fiscal incidence analyses in Brazil and the US, including direct cash and food transfers, targeted housing and heating subsidies, public spending on education and health, and personal income, payroll, corporate income, property, and expenditure taxes. In both...

This paper investigates the reasons why inequality, and distribution more generally, have come to the fore in the development discourse at the tum of the century, after a period of relative neglect in the 1980s. The paper considers, in particular the analysis of (a) efficiency and equity, (b)...

Inequality in Latin America unambiguously declined in the 2000s. The Gini coefficient fell in 16 of the 17 countries where there are comparable data, and the change was statistically significant for all of them. Existing studies point to two main explanations for the decline in inequality: a...