Why are fertilizer prices so high, and what can countries in Central America do about this?

Luis Flores, Viviana Perego, Diego Arias |

Costa Rica lost the momentum for poverty reduction towards the end of the twentieth century. This makes Costa Rica an outlier in a region that conti…

Jacobus de Hoop, Agustin Arakaki |

Central America and the Dominican Republic have a good track record of economic growth. Between 1991 and 2019, Central America grew by an average of 4.5% per year, and the Dominican Republic by an…

Michel Kerf |

Jobs and wage growth have been the most important driver of poverty reduction globally, and Central Asia. In Tajikistan, for example, it has cut poverty by about two-thirds since 2003. In…

Lilia Burunciuc |

Numbers don’t lie. That’s why, in our day-to-day lives, we rely heavily on numbers from household surveys, from national accounts, and from other traditional sources to describe the world around…

Giorgia DeMarchi |

The conventional wisdom is that low world prices for oil only hurt rich exporting countries, while generating a windfall for poor net importer economies. However, in Central Asia, the story is…

Aurelien Kruse |

If you think about it, snow is a pretty amazing thing. It is nature’s way of storing water in the winter, and then using it in the summer when it is needed, namely during the growing season. If it…

Kulsum Ahmed |

When economists think about price shocks, they consider how a change in price will affect the supply and demand of a product. But when that product is human – i.e., a worker – interpreting the…

Elizabeth Ruppert Bulmer, Claire H. Hollweg |

It is July 2012 and cattle farmers in Nicaragua are worried because Guatemala has enacted a series of laws that restrict beef trade. These so-called “non-tariff measures, ” or NTMs, require that…

Jose Daniel Reyes, Maria Jose Gonzalez Rivas |

También disponible en español Since the Great Recession of 2008, there has been a widespread sense of malaise among the American middle class. Their incomes are close to stagnant, employment has…

Francisco Ferreira |