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AbstractThis paper attempts to quantify the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on social capital with cross‐country data. Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS), the authors estimate reduced‐form regressions of the main determinants of social capital controlling for HIV prevalence, institutional quality, social distance, and economic indicators. The results obtained indicate that HIV prevalence affects social capital negatively. The empirical estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in HIV prevalence will lead to a decline of at least 1 per cent in trust, controlling for other determinants of social capital. Moving from a country with a relatively low level of HIV prevalence, such as Estonia, to a country with a relatively high level, such as Uganda, there is a more than 11 per cent point decline in social capital. These results are robust in a number of dimensions and highlight the empirical importance of an additional mechanism through which HIV/AIDS hinders the development process. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of market-oriented reforms in Latin
America and the Caribbean using the IMF Structural Reform database. We find that large
changes in the reform index have positive effects on GDP that exceed 2 percent after
five years. Furthermore, reforms boost employment, investment, exports, and imports and
reduce export concentration, in addition to favoring tradable sectors. The evidence on
the effects of reforms on business confidence is mixed, and the effects on total factor
productivity are positive, but less precisely estimated. Nonetheless, our results also
indicate that the effects of reforms have not been uniform across different segments of
the population. Our results are robust to the use of an instrumental variables approach
that exploits regional waves of reform to deal with endogeneity concerns. These findings
bring to the forefront the need to consider accompanying policies to ensure that reforms
promote inclusive growth.