Macroeconomic policies and performance in Latin America

Dollarization and Macroeconomic Stability in Latin America

This paper examines if dollarization has had a positive impact on the macroeconomic stability of Latin American countries. Dollarization refers to either the official or unofficial replacement of local currencies with the U.S. dollar. Currently four Latin American countries are officially dollarized and the rest experience varying levels of unofficial dollarization. Data from the World Bank Wor...

Credit Union Policies and Performance in Latin America

This paper presents a conceptual framework for explaining credit union (CU) loan delinquency and profitability in developing countries, together with empirical estimation for a unique sample of Latin American CUs. Delinquency and profitability were found to be responsive to the incentives that CUs create for their borrowers to repay loans. These incentives include loan and deposit rates, the us...

Politics, Policies, and Poverty in Latin America

Regional integration and macroeconomic coordination in Latin America

The contagion aspects of the financial and exchange-rate crises in recent years demonstrate the need to extend the domain of macroeconomic policy from the national dimension to the regional one. This paper presents the main concepts and challenges behind macroeconomic policy cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean and evaluates them from a game-theory perspective. Under certain condition...

Smokefree Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean: Making Progress

We reviewed the adoption and implementation of smokefree policies in all Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries. Significant progress has been achieved among LAC countries since the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) was adopted in 2005. Both national and sub-national legislation have provided effective mechanisms to increase the fraction of the population protected fr...