This paper is concerned with the characteristics, determinants and consequences of varying levels of congressional institutionalization. Our work can be traced back to the early work on congressional institutionalization done by Polsby (1968), which is complemented here by the game-theoretic...

This paper analyses how coffee-producing households responded to the low coffee prices prevailing around 2003. We provide theory on differential responses in regions dedicated to coffee growing, compared to more diversified or better accessible regions. We show how labor market effects can...

This paper investigates the impact of trade costs (export customs clearance, subjective assessment of trade obstacles, and input inventory) on the export propensity and intensity of enterprises in Southeast Asia (SEA) and Latin America (LA) using World Bank's enterprise surveys. The results...

Most of the customers of microfinance institutions are female. But do men and women benefit from the same credit conditions? We investigate this issue by presenting an original model and testing its predictions on an exceptional database comprising 34,000 loan applications from a Brazilian...

In this paper, a wide range of innovation indicators are analyzed in order to describe the innovation behavior of manufacturing firms in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the recently released Enterprise Surveys 2010. The Enterprise Surveys define innovation rates as the share of firms...

This work offers non-residential capital stock estimation for major Latin American economies – Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico - made towards a homogeneous method. This work covers the whole twentieth century and the years of the XXI century, expanding backward half century the present...

We analyze differences by gender in the time dedicated to total work (paid and unpaid) by families in Latin America, with particular attention to the effect of social norms. To this end, we use survey data on time use in Mexico (2009), Peru (2010), Ecuador (2012) and Colombia (2012), to estimate...

This paper analyzes whether Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed between the United States and Latin American countries during the last decade produced higher enforcement of labor regulations. The paper computes before-after estimates of the effect of FTAs on labor inspections and exploits...

This paper shows that workers who do not receive legally mandated benefits due to employer noncompliance have a negative view not only of their employers, as has been documented, but also of the State. Those workers believe that the State did not protect their rights, and hence they feel fewer...

The oil price decline creates an opportunity to dismantle energy subsidies, which escalated with high oil prices. This paper assesses energy subsidies in Latin America and the Caribbean—about 1.8 percent of GDP in 2011–13 (approximately evenly split between fuel and electricity),...