Download or read book Breeding Latin American Tigers written by Robert Devlin and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A copublication of United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the World Bank."

Download or read book Breeding Latin American Tigers written by Robert Devlin and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is motivated by the emerging rehabilitation of industrial policies as a tool for supporting economic transformation and high rates of growth in developing countries. It argues that underperforming disciples of the Washington Consensus 'market fundamentalism' should learn and practice the art of systemic industrial policies, which requires a medium-long term strategic perspective and intelligent proactive state interventions in markets. However, it also stresses that rehabilitation requires that industrial policies be developed and implemented in a context of home- grown public-private alliances that avoid state 'capture' by special interests. It first examines the 'how' of industrial policy in the public sectors of ten non-Latin American countries in Asia, Europe, and Oceania that have been successful in promoting economic catch-up with rich countries, or have performed better than Latin American countries with similar resource endowments. The book defines '10+1' generic First Principles for the use, design, and execution of modern industrial policies, and then examines the experiences of nine Latin American and Caribbean governments against these First Principles. The authors identify large gaps in the organizational and operational effectiveness of their public sectors, and suggest ways to close these gaps.

Download or read book Entrepreneurship in Latin America written by Eduardo Lora and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at both the potential and limits of policies to promote entrepreneurship as an important vehicle for social mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean. Who are the region's entrepreneurs? They tend to be middle-aged males with secondary and, often, tertiary education who represent only a small segment of the economically active population in the six countries considered in this book. They come from families in which a parent is, or was, an entrepreneur. In fact, a parent's occupation is more important in the decision to become an entrepreneur than a parent's wealth, income or education. Middle class entrepreneurship tends to dominate the sample in part since this is the majority class in society. However, as a percentage of each social class, entrepreneurship tends to be higher in the upper class, followed by the middle and lower class. Entrepreneurs concentrate in micro enterprises with fewer than five employees. They enjoy greater social mobility than employees and the self-employed, but this mobility is not always in the upward direction. Entrepreneurs face multiple obstacles including stifling bureaucracy, burdensome tax procedures, and lack of financing, human capital, technological skills, and supportive networks. The support of family and friends and a modicum of social capital help cope with these obstacles to entrepreneurship.

Download or read book The China Triangle written by Kevin P. Gallagher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1980, China has evolved from a poor and mostly rural society into one of the largest economies in the world. As it grew into a major industrial power, it demanded enormous amounts of steel for new factories and cities, copper for electronic wires, petroleum for cars and manufacturing plants, and soybeans and cattle to feed its workers. By the 1990s, many Latin American countries were riding China's coattails and beginning to prosper from the new demand. Ever since China entered the World Trade Organization at the turn of the century, Latin America supplied China with more and more of the primary commodities it needs and more. That in turn has produced one the most impressive periods of economic growth on the continent in fifty years. And it was more evenly spread too - a region infamous for its extreme inequality saw it decline by a couple of percentage points over the course of the era. In The China Triangle, Kevin P. Gallagher traces the development of the China-Latin America trade over time and covers how it has affected the centuries-old (and highly unequal) US-Latin American relationship. He argues that despite these opportunities Latin American nations have little to show for riding the coattails of the 'China Boom' and now face significant challenges in the next decades as China's economy slows down and shifts more toward consumption and services. While the Latin American region saw significant economic growth due to China's rise over the past decades, Latin Americans saved very little of the windfall profits it earned even as the region saw a significant hollowing of its industrial base. What is more, commodity-led growth during the China boom reignited social and environmental conflicts across the region. Scholars and reporters have covered the Chinese expansion into East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Africa, the US, and Europe. Yet China's penetration Latin America is as little understood as it is significant-especially for America given its longstanding ties to the region. Gallagher provides a clear overview of China's growing economic ties with Latin America and points to ways that Latin American nations, China, and even the United States can act in order to make the next decades of China-Latin America economic activity more prosperous for all involved.

Download or read book Wage Inequality in Latin America written by Julián Messina and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-12-28 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What caused the decline in wage inequality of the 2000s in Latin America? Looking to the future, will the current economic slowdown be regressive? Wage Inequality in Latin America: Understanding the Past to Prepare for the Future addresses these two questions by reviewing relevant literature and providing new evidence on what we know from the conceptual, empirical, and policy perspectives. The answer to the fi rst question can be broken down into several parts, although the bottom line is that the changes in wage inequality resulted from a combination of three forces: (a) education expansion and its eff ect on falling returns to skill (the supply-side story); (b) shifts in aggregate domestic demand; and (c) exchange rate appreciation from the commodity boom and the associated shift to the nontradable sector that changed interfi rm wage diff erences. Other forces had a non-negligible but secondary role in some countries, while they were not present in others. These include the rapid increase of the minimum wage and a rapid trend toward formalization of employment, which played a supporting role but only during the boom. Understanding the forces behind recent trends also helps to shed light on the second question. The analysis in this volume suggests that the economic slowdown is putting the brakes on the reduction of inequality in Latin America and will likely continue to do so—but it might not actually reverse the region’s movement toward less wage inequality.

Download or read book Stop the Violence in Latin America written by Laura Chioda and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Caribben 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.

Download or read book Latin America and the Asian Giants written by Riordan Roett and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How an evolving relationship with China and India is changing Latin America's political and economic dynamics. In the years since China has adopted a "going global" strategy to promote its overseas investment, expand export markets, and gain much-needed access to natural resources abroad, Sino–Latin American relations have both deepened and broadened at an unexpectedly rapid pace. The main driver behind this sea change in bilateral relations has been economic complementarity, with resource-rich countries in Latin America exporting primary goods to the Asian giants' growing market and China exporting manufactured goods back into the region. In recent years, Sino–Latin American relations have matured considerably, becoming far more nuanced and multifaceted than ever before. India is a relatively new player in the region, but has slowly strengthened its ties. As one of Asia's largest markets, it offers interesting parallels to the Chinese case. Will Indo–Latin American ties follow a similar path? The main areas of growth include trade and investment, mining, energy, information technology, motor vehicle production, and pharmaceuticals. To what extent these changing dynamics will redefine Latin America's relations with India is a question of increasing relevance for policymakers. This volume offers a review of key cross-regional trends and critical policy issues involving the changing relationship between these two Asian giants and Latin America. Selected country case studies—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico—provide a more in-depth analysisof the implications of China's and India's evolving interaction with the region.

Download or read book Fiscal Rules and Economic Size in Latin America and the Caribbean written by Fernando Blanco and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2020-10-10 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the collapse of commodity prices in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in 2014-15, many countries in the region were unable to cushion the impact of the shock in order to experience a more gradual adjustment, to a large extent because they had not built adequate fiscal buffers during the commodities’ windfall from 2010-14. Many LAC countries entered 2020 and the COVID-19 crisis in an even more difficult position, with rising debt and limited fiscal space to smooth the negative impacts of the pandemic and adequately support their economies. Fiscal policy in most LAC countries has been procyclical. Public expenditure and debt levels have expanded in good times and contracted in severe downswings due to insufficient fiscal buffers, making crises deeper. Fiscal rules represent a promising policy option for these and other economies. If well-designed and implemented, they can help build buffers during periods of strong economic performance that will be available during rainy days to smooth economic shocks. This book—which was prepared before the COVID-19 crisis—reviews the performance and implementation of different fiscal rules in the region and world. It provides analytical and practical criteria for policy makers for the design, establishment, and feasible implementation of fiscal rules based on each country's business cycle features, external characteristics, type of shocks faced, initial fiscal conditions, technical and institutional capacities, and political context. While establishing new fiscal rules would not help to attenuate the immediate effects of this pandemic crisis, higher debt levels in the aftermath of COVID-19 will demand rebuilding better and stronger institutional frameworks of fiscal policy in LAC and emerging economies globally. Having stronger fiscal mechanisms that include fiscal rules can help countries prepare for the next crisis and should be on the front burner for policy makers in coming years. The findings and lessons discussed apply to economies of different sizes, with some differences under certain scenarios in terms of the technical design and criteria needed for implementation. In this book, policy makers will find that fiscal rules, if tailored to country characteristics, can work and be an essential fiscal tool for larger and particularly smaller economies.

Download or read book Designing Industrial Policy in Latin America Business State Relations and the New Developmentalism written by B. Schneider and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Development economists and practitioners agree that close collaboration between business and government improves industrial policy, yet little research exists on how best to organize that. This book examines three necessary functions–-information exchange, authoritative allocation, and reducing rent seeking–-across experiences in Latin America.

Download or read book Who Decides Social Policy written by Bonvecchi, Alejandro and published by Inter-American Development Bank. This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines an institutional political economy approach to policy making with social network analysis of social policy formulation processes. Based on extensive interviews with governmental and nongovernmental actors, the case studies of social policy formulation in Argentina, The Bahamas, Bolivia, and Trinidad and Tobago show that while societal actors are central in the networks in South American countries, government officials are the main participants in the Caribbean countries. The comparative analysis of the networks of ideas, information, economic resources, and political power across these cases indicates that differences in the types of bureaucratic systems and governance structures may explain the diversity of actors with decision power and the resources used to influence social policy formulation across the region. These analytical and methodological contributions-combined with specific examples of policies and programs-will help to enhance the efficiency, efficacy, and sustainability of public policies in the social arena.

Download or read book Work and Family written by Laura Chioda and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over recent decades, women in Latin America and the Caribbean have increased their labor force participation faster than in any other region of the world. This evolution occurred in the context of more general progress in women’s status. Female enrollment rates have increased at all levels of education, fertility rates have declined, and social norms have shifted toward gender equality. This report sheds light on the complex relationship between stages of economic development and female economic participation. It documents a shift in women’s perceptions whereby work has become a fundamental part of their identity, highlighting the distinction between jobs and careers. These dynamics are made more complex by the acknowledgment that individuals are part of larger economic units—families. As development progresses and the options available to women expand, the need to balance career and family takes greater importance. New tensions emerge, paradoxically made possible by decades of steady gains. Understanding the new challenges women face as they balance work and family is thus crucial for policy.

Download or read book Left Behind written by Renos Vakis and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Globalization and Development written by Anthony Elson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparing the experience of East Asia and Latin America since the mid-1970s, Elson identifies the key internal factors common to each region which have allowed East Asia to take advantage of the trade, financial, and technological impact of a more globalized economy to support its development, while Latin America has not.

Download or read book Great Teachers written by Barbara Bruns and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes teacher quality in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is the key to faster education progress. Based on new research in 15,000 classrooms in seven different countries, it documents the sources of low teacher quality and distills the global evidence on practical policies that can help the region produce "great teachers."

Download or read book The Political Economy of Natural Resources and Development written by Paul A. Haslam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Political Economy of Resources and Development offers a unique and multidisciplinary perspective on how the commodity boom of the mid-2000s reshaped the model of development throughout Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world. Governments increased taxes and royalties on the resource sector, the nationalization of foreign firms returned to the mainstream economic policy agenda, and public spending on social and developmental goals surged. These trends, often described as resource nationalism, have developed into a strategy for economic development, generated a re-imagining of the state and its institutional possibilities, and created a new but very significant political risk for extractive enterprises. However, these innovations, which constitute the most dramatic change in development policy in Latin America since the advent of neoliberalism, have so far received little attention from either academic or policy-oriented publications. This book explores the reasons behind these policies, and their effects on states, firms, and development trajectories. This text brings together renowned thematic experts to examine the political-economic causes of resource nationalism, as well as its manifestation in six Latin American countries. The causal variables considered by the contributors to this collection include a range of political-economic determinants of policy including commodity prices; the influence of ideology and national politics; ideas about industrial policy; relations between host governments and investors; and how countries respond to opportunities provided by regional initiatives and the new geography of the global economy. This volume is essential reading in development economics, political economy, and Latin American studies, as well as for those who want to understand what economic development means after neoliberalism.

Download or read book Innovative Experiences in Access to Finance written by Augusto de la Torre and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-06-23 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in access to finance and awareness of its importance have increased significantly since the early 2000s. Growing evidence suggests that lack of access to credit prevents many households and firms from financing high-return investment projects, which has an adverse effect on growth and poverty alleviation. Despite the increasing awareness of the importance of access to finance among both researchers and policymakers, there are still some major gaps in our understanding of the main drivers of access, as well as about the impact of different policies in this area. This book aims to fill some of these gaps by discussing recent innovative experiences in broadening access to credit in Latin America. These experiences are consistent with an emerging new view that, while recognizing the central role of the public sector in improving the contractual and informational environment for financial markets, also contends that there might be room for well-designed, restricted interventions in collaboration with the private sector to foster the development of financial markets and broaden access to them. In particular, the book analyzes, among other things, some interesting experiences from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico that use different instruments to broaden access to credit in a sustainable way, such as structured finance, factoring, credit guarantees, and correspondent banking. Most of these experiences have led to financial innovation by developing new financial products and coordinating different players in the financial and real sectors to overcome barriers to access to credit. The book provides a first systematic analysis of these innovative experiences, including an analytical framework to understand problems of access to finance and a discussion of the effects and optimal design of public interventions. Finally, the book discusses some open policy questions about the role of the private and public sectors (including state†?owned banks) in broadening access to finance in a sustainable and market-friendly manner.

Download or read book New Century Old Disparities written by Hugo Nopo and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-09-07 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To what extent do individuals with the same observable endowment of human capital receive different salaries on the basis of their gender or ethnicity? What policy options promise to diminish these earnings gaps? This book tries to answer these and other questions using an innovative technique of matching comparisons.