Shaping the Playing Field for Economic Growth

Policy outcomes depend on design. Small differences in how regulations are written and implemented can produce large differences in incentives, compliance costs, and unintended effects.

This inventory compares labor market, social protection, and tax regulations across 11 Latin American countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru. These frameworks shape workers' incomes and conditions, and firms' labor costs and hiring decisions, influencing how productive activity is organized.

These frameworks operate alongside many other rules that affect business behavior. Mapping the full regulatory ecosystem is beyond the scope of this inventory. Instead, this resource compiles structured, detailed information on three foundational areas that directly affect workers and firms—creating a basis for comparison, diagnostics, and policy learning, and supporting efforts to simplify regulatory burdens, reduce contradictions, and improve policy design.