Governance and export performance of modern services in Latin America and India

This publication aims to analyse the policies and initiatives implemented by the governments of eight countries in the region as well as India, with special emphasis on governance. The inclusion of India as a benchmark is of particular interest, as it is the leading exporter of modern services among developing countries. The document finds that policies that were actively adopted by and coordinated among sectoral stakeholders had a greater impact on the development of the industry. This is all the more relevant in initiatives to attract foreign investment and those related to the development o…

Programme of work of the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES), 2022. Subprogramme 9: Planning and public management for development

Provisional agenda. Eighteenth meeting of the Regional Council for Planning of the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES)

Annotated provisional agenda. Eighteenth meeting of the Regional Council for Planning of the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES)

Report on the status of the Regular System of Government Finance for the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES)

Development in transition: Concept and measurement proposal for renewed cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean

A renewal of international cooperation is essential if more inclusive and sustainable development is to be attained for all the inhabitants of the region. In accordance with the concept of development in transition, elaborated by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean together with the European Commission and the Development Centre of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this cooperation should be tailored to the specific needs of countries and seek to address structural development gaps, contributing to the generation of regional and global pu…

The Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas: A Perspective on Latin America and the Caribbean 2021-2022

This biennial report is the result of the joint efforts of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA). The health, economic and social crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic also offers opportunities for rebuilding and transformation that will strengthen resilience and reduce or prevent future crises. The pandemic has demonstrated that the principle of “rebuilding better” should be the basis of efforts to emerge from the crisis, w…

Strategies for Post COVID-19 Recovery in the Caribbean

The Hummingbird Vol. 8 No. 9

Reduction of the wage share of income and increasingly precarious employment

The economic globalization that began in the late 1970s and early 1980s has generated job insecurity for workers. This coincides with two trends: a reduction in the wage share of income and increasingly precarious employment, both of which have been seen in most market economies since the early 1980s. This article proposes an efficiency-wage model in a demand-constrained equilibrium scenario, to explain how rising job insecurity has reduced the wage share of income and made employment more precarious. An additional virtue of this model is that it explains several features of the Mexican labour…

The economy of the North-East region of Brazil based on the 2011 regional input-output matrix

This paper seeks to determine the leading sectors of the economy of the North-East region of Brazil based on input-output matrix methodology and the economic structure of 2011. For that purpose, the regional input-output matrix was updated from 2004 to 2011 and, subsequently, the Rasmussen-Hirschman linkage indices, field of influence and pure linkage indices were calculated, along with the type I and II multipliers of production, employment and income. The results confirm the importance of the textile and chemical sectors, along with those related to the oil industry, and show that the produc…

The social discount rate in the evaluation of investment projects: an application for Ecuador

The standard social discount rate of 12% applied by planning institutions and multilateral agencies when evaluating public projects is a constant administrative parameter that is unsupported and unresponsive to changes in social preferences over time. This paper presents an alternative way of determining the social discount rate based on the gamma estimation model (Weitzman, 2001) in a developing-country context, which has three advantages: (i) it incorporates decreasing discounting, (ii) it is cost-efficient in that it sums up the various expert opinions and (iii) it adjusts for changes in sh…

The incidence of poverty in Costa Rica between 1987 and 2017: stagnation or reduction?

According to official data (based on the income poverty line), 20% of households in Costa Rica were poor in 1994, a figure that has apparently not changed substantially since. The poverty level is currently considered to have stagnated at around 20% for more than two decades. However, the way poverty is measured has undergone methodological changes that preclude a strict comparison of the data over time. This study offers a method for dealing with the methodological difficulties and obtaining a set of comparable poverty data for the period from 1987 to 2017. It thereby demonstrates that the le…

Okun’s law in Mexico: an analysis of heterogeneity among States, 2004–2018

The sensitivity of unemployment to economic activity in the Mexican States (from the beginning of 2004 to the first half of 2018) was evaluated on the basis of Okun’s law (1983) as it relates to growth rates. To capture the heterogeneity of the 32 States, the results of individual regressions were compared with fixed effects panel data estimates. The Okun coefficient is significant and possesses the correct sign in 22 States, reflecting a variation between -7.21 and -1.25. The remaining 10 States (with the incorrect sign and an insignificant coefficient) are characterized by poor economic, soc…

CEPAL Review no. 134

Ethnicity and social exclusion in Colombia in 2012–2017

This study aims to provide an approach to concepts and ways of measuring ethnicity and social exclusion that can be generalized to any context and time and, thus, make it possible to establish a statistically significant relation between these two categories. The methodology involves fuzzy sets and ordinary least squares regression, using data obtained from the Colombian National Quality of Life Survey for 2012–2017. At the 95% confidence level, it is concluded that when ethnicity increases by 1 percentage point, the degree of social exclusion in the country rises by 7 points. Other characteri…

The growth trajectories of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico: a comparative view through the framework space lens

This paper discusses different growth trajectories in a selection of Latin American economies, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, comparing the phase of import substitution growth strategies with the more recent period of financial integration into the world economy. Our working hypothesis is that different growth trajectories result from the linkages between macroeconomic conditions and changes in production structures. When policy space becomes narrower, long-term growth performance is impaired and structural change will not usually enhance growth potential. We carry out an analysis…

Foreign direct investment flows: an analysis for Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico based on the Grubel-Lloyd index

This article assesses the importance of using the Grubel-Lloyd (GL) index as a tool to reveal trends in foreign direct investment (FDI). The index was developed to further the study of a fundamental question in international political economy: how FDI affects economies, whether individual or regional, and becomes a general framework indicator of regional behaviour. The index is applied to the four largest economies in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) in the period 1995–2016, with a view to demonstrating the importance of FDI for the region. However, the “behaviour” of FDI ma…

Rural employment trends in Brazil: an analysis using dynamic panel models

This article considers certain dimensions of the quality of employment in Brazil, particularly in rural zones. It starts from the perception of changes in rural production relations and the repercussions these have on employment practices. A panel data methodology is applied to capture the determinants of job quality, and a quality of employment index is proposed. Rural employment is more precarious than its urban counterpart, although the differences have been diminishing over time. In the agriculture sector, the economic growth of the 2000 decade merely resulted in the existing conditions of…

The impact of non-contributory cash transfers on poverty in Latin America

This article assesses the impact of conditional cash transfers, social pensions and other non-contributory transfers on different indicators of poverty and extreme poverty in Latin America, based on an analysis of household surveys from 15 countries in the region between 2014 and 2017. It is found that in 2017, the combined effect of non-contributory social protection programmes reduced simple regional averages for poverty by 2.0 percentage points and for extreme poverty by 1.7 percentage points, equivalent to relative decreases of 11.8% and 25.9%, respectively. It is also observed that survey…