Publication

This paper analyzes how major external shocks and policy reforms affect Bolivia's ability to achieve pro-poor growth. The authors consider an optimistic scenario extrapolating the situation prevailing before the onset of the economic crisis in the late 1990s, a scenario that accounts for two negative external shocks and one that captures the combined effect of the shocks and two reform projects in Bolivia. The authors find that the shocks contributed to the economic crisis, and they argue that if the reform projects were implemented, their impact on growth would be large enough to slightly overcompensate the impact of the negative growth.