The main goals of the present report are: first, describe the main stylized facts of growth in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries compared to typical countries in the world over the 1960-2000 period. Second, we attempt to explain the economic growth performance in LAC countries...

We provide evidence on the link between infrastructure development and the distribution of income for the period 1960-97. We use roads, railways, telecommunications, and energy measures. The approach is comprehensive as individual measures and composite indices are used. Cross-country and panel...

We explore the links between trust and a broad range of financial structure and development measures. Our base sample is a cross section of 48 countries and the analysis covers the period 1980-1994. We use a new World Bank data set that provides the most comprehensive coverage of financial...

This paper presents evidence on the impact of labor regulations on income inequality using two recently published databases on labor institutions and outcomes (Rama and Artecona, 2002; Botero, Djankov, La Porta, López-de-Silanes and Shleifer, 2003) and different cross-section and panel data...

The failure of the neoclassical growth model to account for differences in output per worker across countries has suggested that these differences should be driven by cross-country differences in total factor productivity (TFP). This paper discusses various measures of productivity and its...

An adequate supply of infrastructure services has long been viewed by both academics and policy-makers as a key ingredient for economic development. Sub-Saharan Africa ranks consistently at the bottom of all developing regions in terms of infrastructure performance, and an increasing number of...

Latin America's macroeconomic crisis of the 1980s and '90s forced a severe fiscal adjustment across the region. More often than not, however, fiscal stability was achieved at the cost of a drastic compression of public infrastructure spending, which in some countries amounted to half or more of...