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- Volume 2008, Issue 94, 2008
CEPAL Review - Volume 2008, Issue 94, 2008
Volume 2008, Issue 94, 2008
Cepal Review is the leading journal for the study of economic and social development issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. Edited by the Economic Commission for Latin America, each issue focuses on economic trends, industrialization, income distribution, technological development and monetary systems, as well as the implementation of reforms and transfer of technology. Written in English and Spanish (Revista De La Cepal), each tri-annual issue brings you approximately 12 studies and essays undertaken by authoritative experts or gathered from conference proceedings.
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ECLAC in its historical setting
Author: Tulio HalperinThis lecture discusses the features of the colonial situation in Latin America that conditioned the region’s economic and social performance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It deals in particular with Argentina, looking at the events following the First World War through to the beginning of the Second World War. Those events were formative in the education and experience of Raúl Prebisch, who 30 years later would give ECLAC its fundamental characteristics. The lecture examines the ideas that ECLAC contributed to the debate on Latin American development and the evolution of the countries that applied those ideas. It also looks at the external and internal circumstances that changed the context in which development policies were implemented from the middle of the 1970s onwards. Lastly, it identifies the most recent changes in the world economic situation, and the role of ECLAC in defending the ideas of freedom, well-being and tolerance, which are the essence of modern civilization.
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Trade and investment rules: Latin American perspectives
Author: Pierre SauvéThis paper depicts the changing international landscape of investment rule-making from a Latin American perspective. It does so by looking first at the recent evolution of investment rules, pointing out differences and synergies between these closely intertwined processes and the role that Latin American countries have had in shaping them. Against the backdrop of repeated failures to develop a comprehensive set of investment disciplines at the multilateral level, the paper reviews the main arguments that have been recently advanced in favour of and against global rules for investment. The paper dissects the main reasons why investment fell off the negotiating agenda of the Doha Development Agenda of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It concludes with a number of policy lessons regarding the most optimal institutional settings in which to pursue various elements of investment rule-making and sketches a few forward-looking scenarios on investment rule-making at the multilateral level.
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Poverty and employment in Latin America: 1990-2005
Authors: Simone Cecchini and Andras UthoffWhat factors led to the reduction of poverty in Latin America from 1990 onwards? This article looks into the key factors that have played a part in reducing poverty in the region, including, in particular, employment and remuneration for work. With data from household surveys, the authors discuss the ways in which changes in the working age population, in its participation in economic activity, in employment rates and in income from work and other sources affect the per capita incomes of families in the lowest deciles of income distribution and hence in poverty indicators.
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Oil extraction and deforestation: A simulation exercise
Authors: Diego Azqueta and Gonzalo DelacámaraExisting oil fields in Ecuador are approaching the end of their economic life, and permits to exploit new fields in the Amazon region are being granted. The possibility that deforestation may occur in some areas of high ecological value, as has happened in the past as a result of induced migration, justifies posing a simple question: would it be reasonable to exploit these new fields without causing deforestation? This paper does not claim to give an exhaustive answer to this question but, based on previous research, presents a simulation exercise in which the economic value of four tropical forest services are introduced, in order to evaluate the economic loss that deforestation would entail. It is further argued that the environmental impact appraisal should take into account the corresponding premium accorded to investment. In addition, the use of a hyperbolic discount factor is recommended.
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Determinants of technological innovation in Argentina and Brazil
Authors: Eduardo Gonçalves, Mauro Borges Lemos and João de NegriThis article analyses and compares the determinants of innovation in Argentina and Brazil, countries that have based their industrialization strategies on import substitution. Probit regressions in which instrumental variables are used to check for problems of endogeneity of exports reveal that, in both countries, knowledge external to firms helps to promote innovation, that internal research and development capacity is relatively weak and that external trade integration has a positive effect on firms’ propensity to innovate (more so in Brazil than in Argentina). The results of this study suggest in general that there has been modest progress in the pattern of innovation among Argentine and Brazilian firms in recent years compared with the import substitution period.
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Trade-growth relationship in Cuba: Estimation using the Kalman filter
Authors: Pavel Vidal Alejandro and Annia Fundora FernándezIn this article, time-varying coefficients are used to estimate the balance of payments constrained growth (BPCG) model for Cuba. Exports are considered to have been a decisive factor in Cuba’s recovery following the crisis. Also, there was an estimated increase in income elasticity of demand for imports in the early 1990s and between 2003 and 2005, indicating a decrease in import substitution. The conclusion is that, given the rapid rise in the export of services, there are now better growth prospects for the Cuban economy. However, prospects could be better and would benefit a larger share of the economy if import substitution were also made more efficient and other export sectors with a greater multiplier effect were expanded.
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Female-headed single-parent households and poverty in Costa Rica
Authors: T.H. Gindling and Luis OviedoAverage real family incomes rose in Costa Rica in the late 1990s and at the start of the new decade, but poverty rates did not fall. Here it is argued that economic growth in the country did not translate into reduced poverty during this period because of changes that took place in household structure and in the labour market, and that these changes had an important gender dimension Specifically, a rising proportion of female-headed single-parent households led to an increase in the number of women with children entering the labour force, many of them for the first time. Many of these mothers were unable to find or unwilling to accept full-time work in the higher-paying formal sector and ended up unemployed or working part-time as self-employed workers. These labour market phenomena contributed to low incomes for vulnerable households, especially single-parent households headed by women.
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Urban segregation and school backwardness in Rio de Janeiro
Authors: Fátima Alves, Creso Franco and Luiz César de Queiroz RibeiroThis article analyses a dimension that is almost completely absent from studies on the socio-territorial mechanisms that reproduce inequalities in Brazil: differences in the risk of school backwardness among children and young people between 7 and 17 years of age, based on residential segregation in Rio de Janeiro. Data from the 2000 Population Census were used to construct two sets of multilevel logistic regression models to quantify the risk of school backwardness among primary school students in fourth and eighth grade, according to individual characteristics, family socioeducational conditions and the social setting of their place of residence. Apart from showing that residence in a ghetto (favela) is associated with a higher risk of school backwardness, the results show that the risk of backwardness and school dropout is higher among inhabitants of favelas located in wealthy neighbourhoods. Possible explanatory mechanisms for these findings are reviewed.
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Public-debt management: The Brazilian experience
Authors: Helder Ferreira de Mendonça and Viviane Santos VivianThis paper analyses public-debt management in Brazil, and considers the main recent theoretical models and the possible effect that the strategy adopted by the Treasury from 1999 onwards could have on the base interest rate. The findings show that the public-debt-management strategy adopted by Brazil was based on the recommendations of Calvo and Guidotti (1990). The average maturity of public debt, the proportion of shares linked to the Special System of Clearance and Custody (SELIC) and the public-debt-to-GDP ratio all play a significant role in determining the base interest rate. Government efforts to restructure public-debt maturities and reduce the negative effect on the interest rate are key in this regard.
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