This article analyses the education policies applied in Brazil in the six-year period from 1995 through 2000. After noting the need to prepare citizens and the country to face the twenty-first century, it addresses the long-standing lag in Brazilian education and the general characteristics of the educational system of that country. It then describes the educational policy options adopted in the period in question, which were aimed primarily at the expanding the system while improving its quality, and analyses the special features of the programmes in the field of basic education (understood a…
This article analyses the reforms put into effect in the mid-1990s with the aim of setting in motion a process of profound changes in pre-school, basic and secondary education in Chile, the main changes made, and some of the achievements and difficulties of this process as seen at the present day. It begins by describing the initial context of the reforms, in which, as the objectives of full coverage of the educational system had been largely achieved, the new objective addressed was to improve the quality of education with equity. It also makes reference to the institutional changes which had…
Confronted with recurrent macroeconomic shocks, governments in Latin America and the Caribbean have increasingly been concerned about establishing or strengthening systems of social protection and safety net programmes. The goal of these programmes is to help mitigate the impact of shocks on the poor before they occur, and to help the poor cope with the shocks once they have occurred. In this paper, we focus on publicly funded or mandated safety nets functioning as risk-coping mechanisms. The paper reviews the characteristics of a good safety net, in comparison with the main types of safety ne…
This article holds that ensuring the full sway of economic, social and cultural rights makes it possible to advance towards greater equality of opportunities, both for attaining well-being and for asserting differences in the field of identity. This development of the effective use of rights must be complemented with new forms of citizenship connected with the possibility of interaction with the media and greater participation in the knowledge-based society. Only in this way does it seem feasible to give an ethical foundation to social and development policies which have been deprived of ideol…
This article analyses the relations between the international specialization pattern and growth. For this purpose, it adopts as its analytical framework the recent literature emphasizing the importance of initial conditions and public policies, and not only factor endowment. It also analyses the empirical and economic policy implications of this approach. After an introduction (section I);, section II presents the analytical framework: a model with two internationally tradeable goods sectors and a non-tradeable inputs sector, with increasing returns to scale and dynamic pecuniary externalities…
National levels of unemployment in Trinidad and Tobago have remained consistently high since the 1980s, because of the economic recession, subsequent structural adjustment arrangements and the diminution of traditional labour-intensive activities such as estate agriculture. Groups which had been dependent upon casual employment that was available in pre-recession times have been experiencing chronic unemployment. Combining extremely irregular casual employment with activity in the informal sector, they occupy a marginal and precarious position in the labour market. This study examines the way …
Resumen
Las reformas a los sistemas de salud en el mundo, están a la orden del día; los desafíos que enfrentan los formuladores de política en casi todos los países, son bastante similares: hacer un sistema de salud en el que tanto la financiación como la prestación de servicios de salud sean equitativos; buscar un mejoramiento en la eficiencia tanto en la financiación como en el gasto sectorial; mejorar la calidad de los servicios de salud; y lograr sistemas de salud que sean viables y sostenibles financiera y políticamente (Hsiao, 1998);. El sistema de salud colombiano es uno de los que han …
Resumen
El propósito de este estudio es analizar la participación del sector privado en el sistema de salud de Costa Rica, a la luz del proceso de reforma institucional que se encuentra en marcha. El estudio analiza el papel del sector privado desde cuatro perspectivas complementarias: (1); los patrones de utilización de servicios públicos y privados (con base en las Encuestas de Hogares de la última década);; (2); los flujos de gasto entre entes financieros, compradores y proveedores del sistema, a través de la construcción de un juego de Cuentas Nacionales de Salud para el año 1998; (3); los…
El presente informe, además de entregar un amplio y detallado panorama de la situación de la inversión extranjera directa en América Latina y el Caribe, presenta un completo análisis de la situación de Chile como país receptor —particularmente en actividades vinculadas a recursos naturales y más recientemente en el área de los servicios—, de Japón como un importante país inversionista en el ámbito internacional, pero con escasos intereses en la región, y de la industria de las telecomunicaciones, uno de los sectores que mejor reflejo los vertiginosos cambios del proceso de globalización en cur…
Abstract This paper argues that the design of the international financial system should take into consideration three different problems that the current system faces: financial market instability; basic macroeconomic and financial asymmetries that characterize the international economy; and the additional problems generated by the incomplete and asymmetric nature of the current globalization process. It proposes a useful analytic distinction between truly systemic issues, which focus on world economic stability, and center-periphery issues, which are closely associated with the corre…
More free time and disposable income not only in developed but also in emerging countries have generated a demand that shipping lines have capitalized on by offering ocean cruise services to an exponentially growing segment of the tourist industry. With the search for alternative destinations for ocean cruises, in recent years the Southern Cone countries of Latin America have been playing host to an encouraging number of passenger ships during the summer November-March season, suggesting that this sub-region could become a permanent feature of the circuit of international ocean cruises. To con…
La mayor disponibilidad de tiempo libre y de ingresos personales, no sólo en los países desarrollados, sino también de los emergentes, ha generado una demanda que, los armadores de naves han sabido capitalizar mediante la oferta de servicios de cruceros en un segmento de la industria turística que observa un aumento exponencial.En la búsqueda de destinos alternativos para los cruceros turísticos, en años recientes los países del Cono Sur del continente, han recibido en la temporada veraniega noviembre-marzo una cantidad alentadora de naves de turismo y pasajeros, lo que permite vislumbrar la i…
Resumen En este libro se presenta una reflexión sobre la experiencia y las lecciones recogidas en el diseño e implementación de pequeños proyectos que tienen como protagonistas a jóvenes en condiciones de vulnerabilidad social y económica de áreas rurales y urbanas. La reflexión se nutre de las presentaciones y discusiones de cuarenta jóvenes de cuatro países (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay) que representan 20 proyectos destinados a ellos realizada en la sede de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe de las Naciones Unidas (Santiago de Chile, el 8 al 11 de noviembre de 199…
Resumen Los países miembros de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) han planteado la necesidad de aplicar un enfoque de desarrollo integrado. La CEPAL propone que la atención se movilice a un desarrollo con énfasis en la equidad y en la ciudadanía, partiendo de la observación que, en la década de los noventa, las económicas latinoamericanas - aunque hayan mostrado avances importantes en términos macroeconómicos - culminaron con niveles relativos de pobreza superiores a los de 1980, al mismo tiempo que las condiciones en los mercados laborales se han deteriorado en la m…