CEPAL Review - Volume 1994, Issue 54, 1994

This article analyses the markets for health care-related goods and services. Particular attention is devoted to three of those markets: medical services, public and private hospital services, and pharmaceuticals. These three markets -which, taken together, account for between 70% and 80% of total health-care operating expenditures- have structures that are characterized by imperfect competition, marked externalities in terms of the consumption of health care, and a high degree of interdependence.

The Latin American countries’ reorientation towards market economies and their efforts to open their economies up to the international market since the 1970s have given rise to various sorts of financial policies. This article reviews some selected experiences in three areas of the financial sector: i) in the area of banking, eight different cases arc examined in which financial liberalization measures led to various problems in terms of bank solvency during the past 20 years; ii) in respect of the capital market, the rapid development of this market in Chile since the start of the 1980s is analysed; and iii) with regard to inflows of private external financial capital, the high rates exhibited by Mexico since the late 1980s are evaluated. Basing his approach on concepts that place financial liberalization within the context of the types of regulatory systems that establish the ground rules in this sector, the author emphasizes the need to develop the institutional structure of the financial system in a carefully planned manner in order to ensure the solvency and efficiency of financial institutions.

The external and internal imbalances that appeared in the early 1980s, together with the adjustment and stabilization policies applied throughout that decade in Latin America, juxtaposed the need to reduce the fiscal deficit with the need to make up for the loss of income sustained by the most, vulnerable groups of the population as a consequence of the external debt crisis. This article examines patterns of social expenditure in a number of countries in the region, in an effort to determine how these policies affected the level and composition of social spending and, hence, influenced social policy.

An examination of women’s education in the region leads to apparently contradictory conclusions: on the one hand, genuine progress has been made in terms of coverage and performance, justifying the assertion that the region is making headway towards achieving equal opportunities of access where they do not already exist and that the situation will continue to improve. On the other hand, however, an analysis of the data also brings out less positive factors that warrant continued concern about this issue.

The 1980s witnessed the emergence of the concept “labour market flexibility” (LMF) in industrialized countries as well as in some developing countries. As a consequence of poor economic performance in the early 1980s, the view that the way in which labour markets operated constituted a significant obstacle to economic growth gained support at the level of policy makers, employers in general and, not least, in part of the academic establishment.

This article analyses the main challenges involved in modernizing bank supervision in the light of recent banking crises and the changes currently taking place in the financial system at the international level. Within a highly dynamic environment -rapid technological development in the field of informatics, stiff competition within the capital market as a result of liberalization, the increasingly prominent roles being assumed by financial conglomerates in an effort to achieve economies of scope, and the high degree of volatility of the main economic variables, which sharply increases the level of financial risk- the supervision of the banking system needs to be flexible in order to permit financial institutions to take advantage of opportunities for increasing their profitability and efficiency.

This article sums up the benefits and costs of Central American economic integration. Increased economic growth, industrialization based on intra-industry trade, and greater competition in a broader subregional market represent significant benefits for the Central American countries, although for the most part these benefits are concentrated in the more developed countries. The costs of integration stem from the inter-country monetary flows occasioned by currency arbitrage, currency substitution, and the high transaction costs associated with inconvertibility. The elimination of these costs would have other costs, however, in the form of the reduction of national autonomy with regard to macroeconomic policy as a consequence of multilateral coordination and monitoring.

The reduction of the role of the State in the Latin American economies has become one of the central topics in the debate on the process of the economic and social restructuring of the region. Because of the magnitude and rapidity of its achievements, the programme carried out in Argentina in the early 1990s is seen as a paradigm which gives rise to reflection and offers a broad range of lessons for those countries seeking to maximize the social benefits that could be obtained from the privatization of public enterprises. From this point of view, the present article highlights some of the main macroeconomic repercussions of the privatization process (in the fiscal sphere, the external sector, the structure of relative prices, and investment), together with its effects on market formation and the strategies of the main business conglomerates of the country, the forms of public regulation of the privatized areas, and the limitations and shortcomings observed.

The objective of this article is to describe how the transformation of the trade and industrialization regime is taking place in Ecuador and what are the systemic factors which condition the realization of this transformation. A long-run perspective of economic policy and growth in Ecuador (considering the whole of the twentieth century) reveals that growth has been relatively fast compared to other countries in the region, with exports as the driving force of that growth. The disturbing fact is that these exports have been dominated by a few booming export products at different points in time, and that growth has therefore shown a distinct stop-go nature. Corporate behaviour would seem to be characterized by rent-seeking, as natural economic rents have been present at several moments in history.

Within the context of the globalization of the economy, communication and culture and the transition towards societies based on information and knowledge, the sustained development of the cultural industry stands out as a priority means for the articulation of society. For at least the last three decades, culture has been increasingly linked with the growth of the social communication media. Indeed, the cultural industry is becoming a strategic sector for competitiveness, employment, consensus-building, the style of politics and the circulation of information and knowledge.