Suchergebnisse

Despite having accumulated physical and human capital at significant rates, Latin America's growth has been generally disappointing. Successful growth episodes have been accompanied by surges in TFP, sound and stable macroeconomic policies, and fewer distortions and government interventions. Structural breaks are often cited as sources of the disappointing and heterogeneous growth performance of countries in Latin America. We find that, once controlled for external shocks and a measure of distortions, the behavior of per capita GDP in a sample of Latin American countries is remarkably stable.

This paper develops direct tests for evaluating the performance of two types of emergency employment programs put in place in Chile since 1999. Our results suggest: First, decentralized and market-driven programs (subsidies for hiring and training) are more efficient in terms of productivity, but are targeted to people that are less vulnerable to unemployment. Second, direct employment programs result in moderate increases of the income of the households of the participants. This increase may be outweighted by the costs (in present value) associated with higher school drop-out and participation rates. Third, if analyzed at a municipality level (comuna), centralized programs do not target municipalities with higher unemployment, increased vulnerability to unemployment, or even lower median income levels, but are strongly correlated with the political affiliation of its major. Finally, our results suggest that the population targeted in direct employment programs is not more vulnerable to unemployment than the actually unemployed. ; Departamento de Economía