Publication

This paper addresses the question of whether the Bolivian gas boom of the 1990s has bypassed large parts of the poor population. The authors examine the transmission channels through which the large resource inflows related to the gas boom as well as large public transfer programs affect the distribution of income. They focus on labor market impacts, in particular on shifts between formal and informal employment and changes in relative factor prices. They find that as net distributional change is limited, growth generated by the boom reduces poverty despite increasing informality.