Governments of developing countries typically spend between 15 and 30 percent of GDP. Hence, small changes in the efficiency of public spending could have a major impact on GDP and on the attainment of the government's objectives. The first challenge that stakeholders face is measuring...

Despite significant progress in economic reform throughout the 1990s and an exemplary development of the policymaking framework in the second part of the decade, Brazil suffered a major public debt and currency crisis in 2002. Though the political origin of the uncertainty cannot be ignored,...

Governments of developing countries typically spend between 15 and 30 percent of GDP. Hence, small changes in the efficiency of public spending could have a major impact on GDP and on the attainment of the government's objectives. The first challenge that stakeholders face is measuring...

This paper describes the main trends of Brazil's fiscal policy during the last decade and analyzes: (1) the ability to raise the primary surplus in response to external shocks, (2) the pro-cyclical nature of fiscal policy, and (3) the long-run impact of government expenditure composition and...

This paper gauges efficiency in container ports. Using non-parametric methods, we estimate efficiency frontiers based on information from 86 ports across the world. Three attractive features of the method are: 1) it is based on an aggregated measure of efficiency despite the existence of...

The object of the paper is to explain Latin America’s growth slowdown experienced in 1998/99. To do so we used two complementary methodologies. The first one aimed at determining how much of the slowdown could be explained by specific external factors, namely, the terms of trade, international...

Recent estimates of the welfare cost of consumption volatility find that it is significant in developing nations, where it may reach an equivalent of reducing consumption by 10 percent per year. Hence, examining the determinants of consumption volatility is of utmost relevance. Based on...

The authors test for the existence of asset price bubbles in Latin America in 1980-2001, focusing mainly on stock prices. Based on unit root and cointegration tests, they find that they cannot reject the hypothesis of bubbles. They arrive at the same conclusion using Froot and Obstfeld's...

The authors explain Latin America's growth slowdown in 1998-1999. To do so, they use two complementary methodologies. The first aims at determining how much of the slowdown can be explained by specific external factors: the terms of trade, international interest rates, spreads on external debt,...