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Beyond Commodities shows that Latin America and the Caribbean's growth performance over the last decade cannot be reduced to the commodity boom: growth-promoting reforms that strengthened financial development, increased trade openness and improved infrastructure development also played a significant role and can continue doing so. Based on the econometric analysis of panel data from the 1970-2010 period for 126 countries, the study shows that, while the commodity boom facilitated growth in most of the region, it did not determine it. Domestic pro-growth policies and the maintenance of a sound macro-fiscal framework played a central role in explaining the region's good performance during last decade. It also shows that new growth "stars" such as Panama, Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic emerged during this period. In addition, a benchmarking exercise reveals which policy gaps will lead to the highest potential growth-payoffs for each country and helps identify potential trade-offs. Finally, with the worsening of external conditions, the authors conclude that the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have no choice but to turn their attention to domestic drivers to keep growth going, as the structural reforms agenda remains unfinished.

One out of every five Latin Americans or around 130 million people have never known anything but poverty, subsisting on less than US$4-a-day throughout their lives. These are the region¿s chronically poor, who have remained so despite unprecedented inroads against poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean since the turn of the century. Left Behind: Chronic Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean takes a closer look at the region's entrenched poor, who and where they are, and how existing policies need to change in order to effectively assist them. The book shows significant variations of rates of chronic poverty both across and within countries. Within a single country, some regions show incidence rates up to eight times higher than the lowest. Despite the higher rates of chronic poverty in rural areas, chronic poverty is as much an urban as a rural issue. In fact, considering absolute numbers, urban areas in many countries, including Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, have more chronic poor than rural areas. Undoubtedly the region has come a long way during the decade in terms of poverty reduction, guided by a mix of sustained growth and increased levels in amounts and quality of public spending and programs targeted directly or indirectly to the chronic poor. While improving endowments and the context where the chronic poor live is a necessary condition going forward, the decade's experience suggests that it may not be enough to reach the chronic poor. The book posits that refinements to the existing policy toolkit - as opposed to more programs - may come a long way in helping the remaining poor. These refinements include intensifying efforts to improve coordination between different social and economic programs, which can boost the income generation process and deal with the intergenerational transmission of chronic poverty by investing in early childhood development. Equally important though, there is an urgent need to adapt programs to directly address the psychological toll of chronic poverty on people's mindset and aspirations, which currently undermines the effectiveness of the existing policy efforts.

Brings new elements to the public policy debate about alternatives that could effectively help remove barriers to female economic participation.

"The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region has the undesirable distinction of being the world's most violent region, with 24.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The magnitude of the problem is staggering and persistent. Of the top 50 most violent cities in the world, 42 are in LAC. In 2010 alone, 142,302 people in LAC fell victim to homicide, representing 390 homicides per day and 4.06 homicides every 15 minutes. Crime disproportionately affects young men aged 20 to 24, whose homicide rate of 92 per 100,000 nearly quadruples that of the region. The focus of Crime Prevention in Latin America and the Caribbean is to identify policy interventions that, whether by design or indirect effect, have been shown to affect antisocial behavior early in life and patterns of criminal offending in youth and adults. Particular attention is devoted to recent studies that rigorously establish a causal link between the interventions in question and outcomes. This publication adopts a lifecycle perspective and argues that as individuals progress through different stages of the lifecycle, not only do different sets of risk factors arise and take more prominence, but their interactions and interdependencies shape human behavior. These interactions and the relative importance of different sets of risk factors identify relevant margins that can effectively be targeted by prevention policies, not only early in life, but throughout the lifecycle. Indeed prevention can never start too early, nor start too late, nor be too comprehensive."--Publisher's description