A sovereign default is sometimes perceived by economic policy makers as a jump into the unkown. The main piece of information missing is what the costs of a sovereign default are going to be and how they arise. Knowing this is crucial when trying to evaluate how far a country should go to avoid...

Financial crises in emerging market countries appear to be very costly: both output and a host of partial welfare indicators decline dramatically. The magnitude of these costs is puzzling both from an accounting perspective -- factor usage does not decline as much as output, resulting in large...

This paper studies resource misallocation in the Argentine manufacturing (1997-2002) sector using the methodology of Hsieh and Klenow (2008). The study shows that the potential gains in terms of aggregate total factor productivity of equalizing marginal productivities of factor inputs across...

This report updates data on gross public debt for countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region up to December 2009. The data in this report were collected from a questionnaire sent to the LAC debt offices in April, 2010.

This paper addresses the solvency of the public sector in Latin American economies. In particular, it analyzes the standardized public debt statistics for the these economies that have been compiled for the LAC Debt Group and the Inter-American Development Bank and the rist associated with the...