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- Volume 2006, Issue 89, 2006
CEPAL Review - Volume 2006, Issue 89, 2006
Volume 2006, Issue 89, 2006
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30 Years
Author: Oscar AltimirCEPAL Review , first launched in 1976 under the leadership of Raúl Prebisch, has reached its thirtieth anniversary. Over the years, it has sought to serve as a channel for new ideas generated within ECLAC, for the work of researchers interested in analysing the realities of life in Latin America and the Caribbean, and for the discussion of approaches, strategies and policies for promoting equitable development in the region.
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Gaps in the welfare State and reforms to pension systems in Latin America
Author: Andras UthoffPension systems in Latin America are organized as tripartite contributory schemes paid into by employers, employees and the State. Their coverage has always been segmented and very low because a significant percentage of the labour market is composed of subsistence sectors with low productivity and unstable, uncertain access to commercial and financial networks (associated with a lack of employment protections, low income levels and a high incidence of poverty). As a result, contributory systems exclude a large proportion of workers and their families from protection against the risks of disability, old age and death, with large differences in coverage between the formal and informal sectors. The main challenge now is to incorporate solidarity financing into pension systems in an efficient way, so that contributory and noncontributory schemes can be combined in accordance with the logic of social security.
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Heterogeneous demand and market segmentation: the Argentine pension funds system
Author: Ignacio ApellaThe purpose of this article is to assess and formalize the capacity of retirement and pension fund management companies (AFJPs) to segment the market by the income level of demand during 1995 and 2001. By taking a profit maximization model whose specifications include a nonlinear price and a level of demand that is heterogeneous in terms of income level, and by then corroborating this empirically, we confirm the hypothesis that the market was segmented by the management companies and we identify two groups of firms. The first comprised companies that established a high fixed commission and a low variable one with a view to capturing high-income affiliates, while the second group consisted of firms that used the opposite pricing policy to attract low- and mediumincome affiliates. The effect was to reduce direct competition between the two groups of firms.
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Structural change and domestic technological capabilities
Author: Jorge KatzThis paper examines the role of structural change as a source of economic growth and institutional and technological change. With the creation of new activities in the economy, significant changes occur in institutions and in the way domestic production capabilities are organized, which alters the ultimate sources of growth in society. This is a complex process that involves ubiquitous externalities and new forms of clustering and direct interdependence between economic agents that the language of modern growth theory cannot fully capture. Neoclassical growth models construe economic growth in terms of an institution-free equilibrium algorithm that affords insufficient consideration to macro-to-micro interactions, changes in the structure of production, the co-evolution of economic, institutional and technological forces and the process of creation and destruction of production organization capabilities that obtains in the economy during the growth process. This paper argues that precisely these macro-to-micro interactions and the creation of new institutions and capabilities constitute the essence of development.
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Industrial policy and development
Authors: Wilson Suzigan and João FurtadoThis article examines some theoretical approaches in support of industrial policy in Brazil, with special emphasis on the neo- Schumpeterian/evolutionary approach. This approach is applied to the analysis of some satisfactory experiences in the field of industrial policy and economic development in Brazil up to the end of the 1970s, and some unsuccessful attempts in this field from the 1980s on. Lastly, it evaluates the industrial policy applied by the government in the 2003- 2006 period, noting that, in spite of some positive aspects –the emphasis on innovation, clear goals and a new institutional organization– that policy has some weak points, such as its incompatibility with macroeconomic policy, lack of coherence between economic instruments, shortcomings in infrastructure and in the science, technology and innovation system, and lack of coordination and political will.
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A tax on currency transactions as an instrument in the war against poverty
Author: John WilliamsonThis paper considers whether a tax on currency transactions could be expected to raise a significant sum of money for use in the war on poverty. It traces the detailed discussion of Kenen and the subsequent argument of Schmidt, that technical developments would now permit the tax to be levied efficiently by the five authorities who issue currencies in which transactions are settled. It notes the creation of the CLS Bank and the proposal to confine a currency transactions tax to transactions that go through that bank, but argues that this would have dangers. It notes also Spahn’s proposal for a geographically limited tax, but argues that this would not be advantageous if the aim is to raise revenue. The final verdict is that a currency transactions tax of 1 basis point would be feasible and could be expected to raise a sum of the order of US$ 20 billion per year.
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Relative prices in Latin America in periods of low inflation and structural change
Authors: Pedro Sáinz and Sandra ManuelitoRelative prices and price stability have a recognized identity in economic theory and economic policy. In the last 50 years it is possible to configure numerous scenarios, according to the relative importance given by Latin American governments to price stability and relative prices. In the current debate, relative prices have been receiving less attention than price stability. Underlying this appears to be the belief that, with inflation low, the dispersion coefficient for variations in the prices of the goods and services included in the consumer price index should decline as well. The present article, in addition to describing the recent evolution of relative prices in a number of the region’s countries, shows that this belief does not accord with the facts, identifies homogeneous groups of goods and services at either end of the distribution and raises some questions about the implications of this last finding.
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Income instability, mobility and distribution in Argentina
Authors: Luis Beccaria and Fernando GroismanThis article analyses changes in the instability of labour incomes in Greater Buenos Aires between the late 1980s and early 2000s. It aims to study the impact of those changes on different individual and household groups, and then to evaluate the influence of current-income variability on income concentration. For the latter, the average inequality of current incomes is compared with the inequality of average (i.e. more permanent) incomes. The results obtained strengthen the argument for combining cross-section with other data that track the income paths of individuals through time.
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Labour mobility in Argentina since the mid-1990s: the hard road back to formal employment
Authors: Victoria Castillo, Marta Novick, Ana Sofía Rojo Brizuela and Gabriel YoguelThis paper analyses the magnitude and type of employment mobility found in Argentina from the mid-1990s onward using data from the Observatorio de Empleo y Dinámica Empresarial (Employment and Business Dynamics Observatory) of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security of Argentina. The Observatory was developed using social security records of registered private-sector wage employment in the manufacturing, commerce and services sectors. Such employment, however, played a minor role (25%) in the employment structure of Argentina during the period studied. The main finding of this study was a significant level of labour mobility. This article shows that, during the period in question, which was characterized by macroeconomic instability and high dollar labour costs, the dominant labour mobility trend among registered workers was toward exclusion from the formal labour market (through unemployment, inactivity or employment in jobs not registered with the social security system).
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Poverty dynamics in Costa Rica with panel data from cross-sections
Authors: Pablo Slon and Edwin ZúñigaAn analysis of the dynamics of poverty requires longitudinal data. In Costa Rica, as in most Latin American countries, such data are unavailable. In order to examine the dynamic aspects of poverty, this article uses cross-sectional information to develop a set of panel data. Given a stable macroeconomic environment and a constant poverty rate, these data show that the poor households studied over a three-year period were not always made up of the same units, as significant turnover rates were found to exist between the poor and the non-poor.
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Import substitution in Brazil between 1995 and 2000
Authors: Renato Baumann and Ana Maria de Paiva FrancoThe Brazilian economy suffered major changes in the second half of the 1990s, when price stabilization, trade liberalization with an overvalued exchange rate and privatizations altered productive processes in various sectors and led to import substitution, among other phenomena. Import substitution occurred in particular following the reform of the exchange-rate regime, which entailed a substantial devaluation in early 1999. This article seeks to measure the intensity of that process, distinguishing effects that can be related to exchange-rate variations induced by relative prices alone (spontaneous import substitution) from those that reflect levels of effective protection (import substitution induced by trade policy).
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