This paper investigates greenhouse gas emissions convergence among twenty Latin American countries, for the period 1970 to 2015. To that end, we use the Phillips-Sul methodology to examine whether these countries have followed an absolute convergence process or, whether there has been a club...

Carbon taxes are advocated as efficient fiscal and environmental policies, but they have proven difficult to implement. One reason is that carbon taxes can aggravate poverty by increasing prices of basic goods and services such as food, heating, and commuting. Meanwhile, cash transfer programs...

Energy subsidies have been criticized due to their economic inefficiency and promotion of wasteful usage of energy and associated carbon emissions. Conversely, environmental taxes are advocated as efficient policy instruments. Nonetheless, removing subsidies and taxing energy can be politically...

While the harmful impact of droughts is well-documented in rural areas, how droughts affect cities' economies remains an open question. Using monthly labour force surveys from 78 cities in Latin America, we demonstrate that large sustained dry events decrease the probability of being employed,...

This chapter analyses the Pacific Alliance – an economic bloc formed by Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru in 2011 – and its integrated stock exchange, the Mercado Integrado Latinoamericano (MILA). It contends that the Alliance has the potential to foster the transition toward a sustainable...

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are an innovative institutional model to channel financing and knowledge to developing countries. In Latin America, the balance of forces between competition and collaboration among MDBs and other sources of development finance have formed a system that is...

After the Great Depression and throughout the rest of the twentieth century, Latin American countries basically approached economic development following two successive and quite opposed strategies. The first one was import substitution industrialization. The second was the so-called Washington...

We address the question of whether foreign aid helps attract foreign direct investment (FDI). This could be achieved if well targeted aid removed critical impediments to higher FDI inflows. In particular, we test the hypothesis that aid for education is an effective means to increase FDI flows...

Discontent with the substantial influence of major global players in International Financial Institutions (IFIs) has raised a call to restructure these organizations. Greater involvement of borrowing members in lending decisions has been proposed in order to limit the exposure of development...

Macroeconomic stability and growth in the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region have allowed governments to focus on public policies that build on the complementarities between financial education, inclusion and the development of social capital. Financial education programmes can support...