Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Regional integration In the 1990s
The renewed interest sparked by the potential for intraregional cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean today has been reflected in numerous agreements regarding trade preferences and in attempts to establish free trade areas, customs unions or common markets. The possibility has even been discussed of setting up free trade arrangements on a hemispheric scale.
The political economy of the developmentalist State in Brazil
The study of the political economy of the crisis of the State and its role in the trajectory of Latin American development is an urgent political task which could also contribute to the historical and theoretical debate about industrial development in late evolving capitalist economies.
Participation and the environment
The petroleum-based production pattern has ultimately proved to be a dead end as the deteriorating quality of natural resources -owing to the way they have been used and appropriated- has begun to cast doubt upon the pattern’s viability. Repeated soundings of alarm on this score have increasingly sensitized the population, thus creating a level of ecological awareness that has moved society to voice its ever more vehement rejection of a system which bases itself on the destruction or degradation of natural resources and, in so doing, jeopardizes the sustainability of the development process.
The social actors and structural adjustment
This paper presents several hypotheses on the social and political context of the application of the so-called structural adjustment policies and their effects on the social organization and patterns of conduct of the collective actors involved. The central idea put forward here is that, quite apart from the crisis (economic, social and sometimes political) which precedes and generally accompanies the application of these policies, they ultimately bring about profound and lasting changes in the social structure of the countries implementing them.
State-owned enterprise reform in Latin America
The purpose of this study is to analyse the major characteristics and consequences of State-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms in Latin America so as to derive conclusions useful for guiding future reform programmes. Three countries at different stages of the reform process were identified for in-depth study; Chile, Mexico and Argentina. The underlying rationale for SOE reforms in Latin America has been both economic and political. In most countries the need to reduce the public sector deficit was a primary motive for initiating reforms. In Chile, Mexico and Argentina public sector deficits hit historic highs in the year prior to the initiation of reforms. Chile initiated the first major reform of sons in the region in 1974.
Latin America and the new finance and trade flows
This article explores Latin America’s prospects with regard to international finance and trade in the 1990s. It is concluded that the external environment will probably be unfavourable, although there will be some opportunities for supporting the region’s structural adjustment processes.
Adjusting power between the State and the market
The models that dominated economic science and policy in the first three decades of the post-war period have broken down and there are no consummate replacements. The outlook seems to be conservative. The late 1970s turned back the clock which was moving for two centuries in the direction of morally justifying Stale intervention Intended to moderate or correct the social inequalities produced by market operations. Part I of this article explores these trends.
Monetary policy and an open capital account
In this paper the author analyses some of the difficulties encountered by monetary authorities when they are operating in a situation of international capital mobility; more specifically, he focuses on how two of their monetary policy objectives -controlling inflation and maintaining a stable exchange rate- may conflict.
Growth, crises and strategic turnarounds
The import-substitution strategy was entirely justified in the 1930s and continued to make sense until the late 1950s, so long as export opportunities were being dampened by the Great Depression, the Second World War and the reconstruction of Europe. From the 1960s on, however, it afforded diminishing returns as international trade burgeoned. During the 1980s, the macroeconomic instability caused by the debt crisis compounded the problems associated with this development strategy, which had begun to become apparent in the 1970s.
In memory of Pedro Vuskovic: Jacobo Schatan
For those o f us who shared many years offriendship and professional collaboration with Pedro Vuskovic, the news of his recent death in Mexico has been the cause of great sorrow, not only because of the circumstances of his death, following a cruel disease that gradually sapped his physical -but not intellectual- strength, but also because it signifies the loss of a great Latin American, of a teacher who helped shape so many generations of young people in our region, and of a companion during so many days of intellectual strivings and political struggle.
Rationalizing social policy: Evaluation and viability
In this article, it is argued that only a small fraction of social expenditures actually reaches the poor. Diverse social policy weaknesses which account for leaks and ineffective use of resources are reviewed, and the authors maintain that it will only be possible to overcome those deficiencies if serious ex ante and cx post evaluations of social programmes and projects are made.
Strategic management, planning and budgets
After having reached a turning point some time ago, the political, economic and social processes of the countries of the region are currently in the midst of a transition. Now that the wave of change which elevated the market and private enterprise to a position of unrivalled supremacy has passed, amore thoughtful evaluation needs to be made of the virtues and responsibilities, shortcomings and excesses of these factors.
Small nations and the ‘constrictive’ style of development
In 1975 CEPAL submitted a request to a distinguished Uruguayan intellectual, Carlos Real de Azúa, for a study on the special economic and political development problems that small nations have to face, The author prepared a first draft in that same year, but, for various reasons, never completed the final version. Now, when all who knew him are lamenting his untimely death, we wish to pay him the modest tribute of publishing part of his study in the form of an article.
Latin America’s prospects in the financial markets
Since the onset of the debt crisis, officials in both creditor and debtor nations have declared that commercial banks would resume making new loans to developing country borrowers once the debtors completed their macroeconomic adjustments and restored their creditworthiness. However, the commercial banks’ long-term business interests may no longer coincide with Latin America’s debt service and investment requirements.
Participation and concentration in social policies
The author of this article contends that, as a consequence of the debt crisis, macroeconomic goals and social goals have become relatively dissociated from one another and that the latter have tended to be reduced to the provision of special attention to the needs of the poorest groups in the population.
Rural social policy in a strategy of sustained development
This article discusses the changes observed during recent years in the social, demographic and occupational fields in the rural world, which, when they are added to the centuries-old problems of the sector, foreshadow severe imbalances in the context of the new modalities of functioning of Latin American economies that arise from the present crisis. It advances the thesis that in most of the countries of the region the solution of the problem of the peasantry and the achievement of a higher degree of equity in rural society, as well as between the rural and urban societies, constitute inescapable imperatives for any viable strategy of national development in the 1990s.
The heterogeneity of poverty. The case of Montevideo
The economic crisis suffered during the present decade by the Latin American countries reduced the wages and incomes of many families, with a consequent deterioration in the living conditions of the affected population. Homes which had previously met the minimum conditions for ensuring the social integration of their members sank into poverty, thus increasing the heterogeneity of this phenomenon.
Cuba’s convertible currency debt problem
In the decade of the 1980s, Cuba has confronted a worsening debt problem in terms of convertible currency and in the context of its participation in the world economy. Before 1985, the debt problem appeared to be manageable, indeed it did not seem to be seriously damaging to Cuba’s macroeconomic growth performance, which was strong from 1981 to 1985 in contrast to most other developing country debtors, which underwent profound economic contraction in this period.
The ecopolitics of development in Brazil
How a collectivity deals with nature discloses as much about its internal social relations as the other way around. The present inquiry is a prologue to more detailed study of ecopolitics, to the study of the political philosophy of relations between human beings and nature, exploring the feasibility of integrating the knowledge of the social and of the natural sciences on the interchange between human activities and the cycles of nature. It is also an introduction to the study of a specific type of public policies, those that address issues of resource use and conservation, and the quality of life, especially in the so-called developing countries.
Neo-Keynesian macroeconomics as seen from the South
The central problem in macroeconomics is to determine to what extent variations in aggregate demand will fall exclusively on prices, or whether they will also have an impact on output. The Phillips curve was one answer to this question, but when this attempt at synthesis failed, the issue was reopened.