Berkman, Heather; Carmen Pagés; Néstor Gandelman; Eduardo Gandelman; Sebastián Calónico; Viviane Azevedo; Mark Payne; Juan Camilo Cárdenas; Suzanne Duryea; Juan Camilo Chaparro; Eduardo Lora y Hugo Ñopo (2008). Outsiders?: The Changing Patterns of Exclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean. Inter-American Development Bank Publications, Inter-American Development Bank, number 79268 edited by Suzanne Duryea, Alberto Chong, Jacqueline Mazza, Gustavo Márquez y Hugo R. Ñopo.

This report raises a number of fundamental questions about the multidimensional and interrelated nature of social exclusion and moves beyond the traditional emphasis on outcomes and groups to view exclusion as a process that results from societal traits that limit the functionings of the excluded. Using the tools of experimental economics, the report shows the enormous economic and welfare costs of exclusion, suggesting that inclusion policies should be viewed as an investment rather than as a supposedly generous handout to the worst off in society. Inclusion policies thus are more than new programs or new institutions to redress past injustices through income transfers, and imply fundamental changes in the way decisions are made, resources are allocated, and policies are implemented in democratic societies