Natural disasters are an important source of vulnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has one of the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belize''s public finance to the occurrence of...

In recent years, an increasing number of countries have began anchoring their fiscal policy frameworks in terms of rules that target the cyclically adjusted or structural (as opposed to actual) balance in an effort to overcome problems of procyclicality and fiscal volatility. The logic for doing...

Do voters punish governments that introduce fiscal "austerity" measures? If so, does voter response vary according to the design (composition) of fiscal adjustments? What determines the timing of fiscal consolidations? The empirical literature on the political economy of fiscal adjustments,...

This paper contributes to an agenda that views the effects of federalism and decentralization as dependent on the incentives of national and subnational political actors. It studies the mechanisms by which subnational actors affect decisions at the central level, in the context of a highly...

This paper argues that the details of political institutions help explain the low levels of personal income taxation. In particular, legislative malapportionment enables rich elites to exercise disproportionate political influence. Because over-represented districts tend to be dominated by...

During the last decade, the Latin American and Caribbean region has experienced unprecedented natural resources abundance. This book highlights how transparency can help realize the benefits and reduce negative externalities associated with the extractive industries in the region. A central...

According to an influential theoretical argument, presidential systems tend to present smaller governments because the separation between those who decide the size of the fiscal purse and those who allocate it creates incentives for lower public expenditures. In practice, forms of government...

Gains from government crime-reducing programs are not always visible to the average citizen. The media overexpose crime events, but the absence of crime rarely makes the news, increasing the risk that citizen may have inaccurate perceptions of security. Through a survey experiment carried out in...

This paper contributes to an agenda that views the effects of policies and institutional reforms as dependent on the structure of political incentives for national and subnational political actors. The paper studies political incentive structures at the subnational level and the mechanisms...

This paper surveys selected themes in the political economy of policymaking in Latin America, with an emphasis on recent research focusing on actual decision and implementation processes, and on the political institutions and state and social actors involved in those processes. In particular,...