We explore the causal effect of market-oriented pension reform on net foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in Latin America, which has experienced a wave of pension privatization and FDI in the last two decades. With our balanced panel of 17 countries over the 1991-2006 period, we implement...

During the past decade most Latin American countries reformed and liberalized their electric sectors. This paper examines these reforms, providing a critical examination of the effects. Late reformers learnt from the experience of earlier reforming countries, and in particular from the Chilean...

In this paper I use a large data set to analyze two aspects of the Latin American arts: (1) the nature of artistic creative process, and (2) Latin American art as an investment. I use data on auctions to understand the relation between artists' age and the value of their work. The analysis on...

This paper analyzes bond and stock markets in Latin America and uses these patterns to investigate whether contagion occurred in the 1990's. It defines shift-contagion' as a significant increase in cross-market linkages after a shock to one country or region. Several coin-toss examples and a...

This paper documents the high level of job security protection in Latin American labor markets and analyzes its impact on employment. We show that job security policies have substantial impact on the level and the distribution of employment in Latin America. They reduce employment and promote...

"This paper studies the cycles of investment and expropriation in the contextof the Latin American oil sector. In particular, it provides an explanationfor the state´s difficulties in capturing the oil rents and rationalizes the tendencyof governments to periodically renege on their prior...

This paper assesses empirically whether global investors´ risk aversion-and its main determinants (U.S. economic growth and the U.S. risk-free rate)-explains developments in Latin American sovereign spreads. We find that global risk aversion is significant and positively related to sovereign...

In this paper we focus on a particular family of studies, namely, wage gaps decompositions. Numerous efforts have focused on documenting earnings differentials between females and males, indigenous and nonindigenous people, or Afro-descendants and whites. As the pieces of the literature that we...

This paper consists of four parts following an introduction. Section 2 analyzes and describes the main channels (transmission mechanisms) through which the process of globalization affects poverty directly and indirectly. Section 3 reviews the major effects of globalization on the Latin American...