CEPAL Review - Volume 2021, Issue 135, 2022

The current debate on industrial policies is no longer focused on whether such policies are necessary, but on how best to implement them and on the lessons that can be learned (and transferred) from successful industrialization experiences. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of different configurations of industrial policies on the growth and international engagement of nine Latin American economies. This impact is measured by analysing autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models and intervention models for 1966–2014. The results show that the interventions analysed did not significantly modify the behaviour of the time series studied, except in the case of the economic growth series. For the other variables, the interventions were quite self-contained, and it was impossible to identify any behavioural pattern associated with the intervention periods analysed.

This article analyses the link between universities and business from a neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary theory perspective. It aims to identify the thematic communities present in the literature that deals with the university-business relationship, highlighting the focuses of interest of this literature and currently emerging themes. Social network analysis and text mining tools are used for this purpose. The present contribution differs from other reviews by using large datasets, which made it possible to discern aggregate trends in scientific output. Six thematic communities were detected in the literature: technology parks, entrepreneurial university, triple helix, transfer channels, geographic perspective and open innovation. Once these communities were defined, the characteristics of each one were identified, along with their linkages, differences and limitations, with a view to gaining an understanding of the knowledge transfer processes.

This study assesses the economy-wide impacts of private investment in the hotel industry in Jamaica. Specifically, the paper develops a tourism-extended social accounting matrix (SAM) and a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model tailored to the Jamaican economy. To analyse impacts in terms of poverty and inequality, the CGE model results are linked with a microsimulation model. The results demonstrate that private tourism investments leading to an expansion of foreign demand for tourism can have positive impacts on national economies in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), employment, household incomes and poverty reduction. However, the distribution of benefits is dependent on socioeconomic factors such as the distribution of factor endowments among households. At the sectoral level, sectors catering more directly to tourism experience the highest rates of growth, while more export-oriented sectors do not fare as well given the upward pressure on prices and the real exchange rate resulting from higher tourism spending.

Based on the hypothesis that the rules of monetary and fiscal policy in Brazil may have been subject to different regimes, the present study applies the Leeper model (1991 and 2005) to identify the chronology of policy regimes in terms of their active and passive character. The policy rules are estimated using the Markov-switching model, with a monthly database from November 2002 to December 2015, in which the regimes are endogenously determined. The results obtained indicate that fiscal dominance occurred in 2010 and between 2013 and 2014, while monetary dominance marked much of 2003 and the period 2005–2007. The model also seeks to explain why the inflation rate continued to rise during 2015 even though Central Bank of Brazil took an active monetary policy stance that year.

This paper proposes to develop a balance-of-payments-constrained growth model to analyse the importance of the relationship between real exchange rate misalignment and the share of industry in output. Building on the work of Gabriel, Jayme and Oreiro (2016), the model is expanded to address: (i) the influence of price competitiveness on net exports; (ii) capital mobility; (iii) nominal exchange rate flexibility; (iv) the nominal wage as a fraction of the value of labour productivity; and (v) a quadratic relationship between the growth rate of the share of industry in output and exchange-rate misalignment. An important result is that both flexible and fixed exchange rate regimes are compatible with a balanced growth path.

This article analyses the impact of the increasing use of electronic means of payment on the demand for cash (banknotes and coins). It estimates two models: one with panel data and the other with cross-sectional data. The two methodologies offer complementary views for evaluating the degree to which electronic means of payment act as a determinant of currency in circulation. The study identifies an intense substitution process between cash and electronic means of payment, which is common to most of the economies analysed. However, there are also a number of idiosyncratic factors that explain the high degree of heterogeneity in the demand for cash that exists between countries. In emerging economies, electronic payment is still incipient, so the demand for cash is likely to continue to decline. However, this does not mean that these economies will become “cashless societies” in the near future.

This article seeks to contribute to the debate on China-Latin America relations. It considers whether the trade relations that exist between China and the region are mutually beneficial or, instead, reinforce Latin America’s dependency on the international scenario. The effects of Chinese growth on a group of Latin American countries are analysed using the computable general equilibrium model of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP). Chinese growth was simulated through an expansion of the Chinese capital stock, thus mirroring the trend observed in recent decades. The results suggest a return to the commodity export model and a reduction in industrial activity in the Latin American countries analysed, particularly in the high-tech sectors. Nonetheless, well-being in Latin America also increased, mainly owing to improvements in the terms of trade (resulting from the commodity price boom).

This article analyses the labour market inclusion of young Brazilians, especially poor ones, by measuring the impact of the Bolsa Família programme on the process. Using data from the 2015 National Household Survey (PNAD), an exploratory analysis was conducted and the propensity score matching technique applied. Young people were found to have particular difficulty in entering the labour market, while poor young people were even more excluded, suffering high rates of unemployment and informality and receiving the lowest wages. The study also found that the Bolsa Família programme had no effect on the inclusion of young beneficiaries in the formal labour market, while there was a negative impact on participants’ incomes. However, no “sloth effect” was observed.

The aim of this study is to cast light on the relationship between the spatial concentration of high-skilled workers and the productivity of cities in Latin America. The relationship is not clear at first sight. On the one hand, the segregation of high-skilled workers should create agglomeration economies and give rise to positive spillovers amongst the most advantaged, offsetting productivity losses that result from the existence of ghettos of low-skilled workers. On the other hand, it may well be that these spillovers are not enough to compensate for the loss of productivity in the worse-off groups, so that aggregate productivity is negatively affected. We analysed this segregation for a group of Latin America’s largest cities and found a negative and significant relationship between the productivity of cities and the segregation of high-skilled workers. However, we also found evidence of a quadratic relationship between segregation and productivity.

Tax exemption has been used systematically in Brazil to stimulate the economy. In 2009, in an attempt to stem the economic slowdown, the Brazilian government adopted a countercyclical economic policy that included lowering taxes on vehicle prices. Why was this sector chosen rather than another? This article seeks to analyse the effects of this policy on the Brazilian economy in 2009, using as a counterfactual a tax exemption policy targeted on the agriculture sector. Based on an interregional computable general equilibrium model (TERM-BR), the two policies are simulated and compared. The results show that lowering taxes on agricultural products can be considered superior to an equivalent tax reduction for vehicles, in terms of the effects on employment, income, household consumption, GDP and, especially, the distribution of economic activity across the regions of Brazil and the income distribution.