Partnerships for the Goals

Venture capital (VC) contributes to the financing of high-growth companies. In Latin America and the Caribbean, this capital is lower than in China and India as well as the developed economies. Nonetheless, between 2005 and 2011, regional VC investments grew by 30% per year. Venture capital investments in Latin America and the Caribbean tend to be larger, focus less on high-technology industries and are more likely to be funded from abroad than those in benchmark regions. Transactions in Latin America and the Caribbean are made by less experienced investors and in fewer rounds than in comparator countries. Venture capital growth has been quite procyclical. The evidence shows that VC investments are in the early stages of development, with apparently more money than high-technology ideas.

Labour market flexibility has been a traditional subject of study in labour economics; recent literature has focused on the related concept of fluidity, broadly understood as the mobility of workers and jobs in the labour market. Here, we compute standard measures of fluidity for the Colombian urban labour market, finding evidence of increased fluidity, especially after 2010. Recent developments in equilibrium unemployment models predict, in general settings, a negative relationship between some fluidity measures and the equilibrium rate of unemployment. Recent literature on worker and job flows has identified benign aspects of fluidity, in that fluid labour markets are expected to have shorter average unemployment duration. We find evidence for a positive effect of fluidity on different employment and occupation indices using instrumental variable regression models that exploit variations in labour market outcomes and fluidity measures over time.

This study contributes to the limited literature on environmental impact assessments by undertaking an ex post evaluation of a programme to improve the environment through various community-based initiatives that promote education and citizen participation in Chile. In line with the selection criteria for the projects and the nature of the data available, the instrumental variables method is used to determine this programme's effect on perceived problems associated with multiple environmental issues. The results reveal that, in the short term, only the perception of odour pollution improves, while, in the long term, the impact on that issue increases twofold and the perception of air pollution and pollution caused by stray dogs both improve by a similar magnitude.

This study applies a propensity score matching model to quantify the significance of preschool education in short- and medium-term academic results in several Latin American countries, using data from the Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (TERCE) conducted among third and sixth grade pupils. The results vary by country and grade, with standard deviations ranging between 0.05 and 0.3. Third-grade reading and mathematics scores show an effect greater than 0.10 standard deviations in at least 10 countries, while 7 countries show the same effect for the three tests conducted in sixth grade.

This paper analyses the relationship between innovation and job creation in firms. In particular, it seeks out data on the role played by innovation during the latest phase of expansion in Argentine manufacturing employment (2010–2012). It uses the model proposed by Harrison and others (2014), taking an instrumental variables approach and drawing data from the recently concluded National Survey of Employment Dynamics and Innovation (ENDEI). The results show that process innovations do not influence employment growth, but that this is positively affected by product innovations. The latter also enable production efficiency to be increased by more than it can with existing products. Where the composition of employment in terms of skills is concerned, product innovation is found not to present any particular bias.

This paper reveals that over the period 1985-2013, the wealthier states of India experienced a prevalence of the feedback hypothesis between real gross domestic product growth and petroleum consumption in the short run and the long run. Over the short term, the whole (major) 23 Indian state panels show support for the conservative hypothesis. Regarding the panels comprising low- and middle-income Indian states, although there appeared to be significant bidirectional effects in the long run, none of the results suggest that energy consumption increases economic growth. This implies that growth in energy demand can be controlled without harming economic growth. The results, however, indicate that for the low- and middle-income states, increases in petroleum consumption could adversely affect economic activity in the short and long run. These findings relate to the aggregate data on petroleum. Examining the short-run and long-run energy-growth linkages using disaggregated data on petroleum consumption reveals that only a few types of petroleum products have stable long-run relationships with economic growth. In fact, with disaggregated petroleum data, the vector error correction model (VECM) and cointegration results support the neutral hypothesis for high-incomes states. For the low- and middle-income groups, while the conservation effect is found to prevail in the short run and the long run, higher economic growth appears to reduce consumption of selected types of petroleum products.

Applying data envelopment analysis (DEA) to data from the 2016 Global Innovation Index (GII) (Cornell University/INSEAD/WIPO, 2016), the paper evaluates the efficiency of 19 Latin American and Caribbean economies in creating innovation-friendly environments. Where the region performs best is on infrastructure and adaptation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), but there are problems with human capital formation, the conduct and impact of research, and institutional aspects. The output of countries such as Chile and Colombia proved lower than expected given their factors, meaning that their strong innovation results are not matched by their efficiency management. Enhancing market functioning (competition, credit and investment) and knowledge absorption capacities is among the main challenges for the region.

The German writer, Thomas Mann, having escaped fascism in 1933, wrote that he was “too much of a good German and too much linked to the cultural traditions and to the language of [his] country,” to be able to accept the idea of his exile without feeling extremely apprehensive.