This paper analyses the importance to the Latin American countries of the main dispute resolution facilities and conventions applicable to international trade and investment, of which they are the inseparable complement. The spectacular growth in the disputes which these facilities deal with reflects the impact that international trade and investment are now having on economic development. Despite international progress, however, most of the countries have yet to update their domestic legislation, so that this remains a pending task. Accession to the conventions referred to entails numerous re…
Insurance policies are required, along with other measures, to deal with the magnitude and depth of social and economic risk in Latin America. The peculiarities of insurance markets (such as the constraints of the pricing system, the intrinsic characteristics of insurance as an economic good and its dimensions as a public good, its externalities, and risk selection with its adverse effects on equity and efficiency); justify the consolidation of stable, appropriate risk diversification and financing that is oriented by the principle of solidarity, with funding either from compulsory contributio…
Division, The 1980s and 1990s were decades in which spurious labour absorption, meaning rapid growth in low-productivity jobs, took place on a large scale in most of the Latin American countries. This was a major setback to expectations about reforms that had sought to internationalize the countries' economies and position them as competitive, high-productivity producers. This paper describes the evolution of productive labour absorption since the post-war years. It reaffirms the value of this category of analysis, regarded in ECLAC thinking as the main link between technical progress in …
This paper addresses how and why domestic
workers in Jamaica are disenfranchised, with
particular emphasis on the law’s inability to
combat their exploitation in the labour force. My
starting point is an online newspaper article
entitled “Coping as a Domestic Helper”, which
was based on a study investigating the living
standard and coping strategies of minimum wage
earners. In Jamaica domestic workers fall into
three main categories - the residential worker,
the non-residential weekly worker and the daily
worker. Domestic workers are undervalued and
their plight is especially grievous because
…
The contents of this article complement those of the recently published FAL Bulletin No. 201, which referred to the rules of origin included in economic integration agreements signed by members of the Latin American Integration Association (LAIA). On this occasion the relationship between rules of origin and facilitation of international trade in goods is examined. The contents of both this issue and of FAL Bulletin No. 201 have been taken from a more extensive document written by the same author, which is publication No. 28 of the ECLAC Comercio Internacional Series, Normas de origen y proced…
Este artículo complementa los contenidos del recientemente publicado Boletín FAL No. 201, que se refirió a las normas de origen en Acuerdos de Integración Económica (AIEs) suscritos por países Miembros de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración (ALADI). En esta oportunidad se examina la relación existente entre las normas de origen y la facilitación del comercio internacional de los bienes. Tanto los contenidos de esta edición como los del Boletín FAL No. 201 han sido extractados de un documento más amplio realizado por el mismo autor, cuya publicación corresponde al No. 28 de la Serie Co…
With the first signals of a global economic recovery, prospects for private capital flows to emerging markets improved in the first quarter of 2002. Despite the concerns over corporate accounting practices in the U.S. and the deepening of the economic and financial crisis in Argentina, emerging equity and bond markets have outperformed those in industrialized countries. Emerging market equities and bonds in the first quarter of the year continued to show the strong performance that started in the fourth quarter of last year. The overall JP Morgan Chase EMBI+ excluding Argentina rose about 20%…
El presente trabajo se enfoca a determinar la incidencia que han tenido en el sector agrícola los cambios en el estilo de desarrollo experimentados por los países del Istmo Centroamericano en los últimos años, los cuales han introducido reformas en el manejo de sus economías a raíz de la apertura, la desregulación y la liberalización de los mercados. Con relación a la sustentabilidad de la agricultura en la región, la producción de granos básicos desempeña un papel preponderante en la actividad económica de elevados porcentajes de la población rural, así como en la generación de empleo …
Outsourcing in different modalities is a dominant element of domestic economies and of the world economy. Although the literature is new international production is not a new phenomenon. Yet, the scale of international operations was extended and the pace was accelerated with the movement of trade liberalisation, privatisation and market deregulation of the past decades, together with great progress in technologies of transportation, information and communication that drastically reduced the costs of coordinating international transactions. Internationally dispersed activities have been integr…
This study evaluates aspects of ex-post competitiveness, trade specialization, the dynamics of import markets, the main competitor countries, and trade protection in the six Central American and eight Caribbean countries and their main destination markets, the European Union (EU); and the United States.
Today every one of these countries is involved in regional integration initiatives, free trade agreements and multilateral trade liberalization. The countries of Central America and the Caribbean alike enjoy some degree of preferential access to their destination markets.
This analysis leads to…
O aprofundamento das negociações entre os 34 países que comporão a ALCA mostrou a importância da realização de avaliações sobre normas e procedimentos em compras governamentais adotados em alguns blocos de comércio referenciais, como é o caso da União Européia, do Acordo de Compras Governamentais da OMC e do capítulo sobre compras governamentais do NAFTA. Revela-se, ainda, de primordial interesse avaliar a política de aquisições governamentais adotada na legislação dos Estados Unidos, o maior parceiro da ALCA, pela abrangência que esta assume ao determinar a preferência, nas aquisiçõe…
O texto aborda implicações de hipotéticos resultados da negociação da Área de Livre Comércio das Américas (ALCA) sobre o Investimento Externo Direto (IED) em um conjunto selecionado de segmentos de serviços —a saber, seguro-saúde, seguro de crédito à exportação, transportes terrestres, serviços de engenharia e serviços profissionais. Partindo-se do pressuposto de homogeneização regulatória, cujo centro de gravidade estaria nas economias desenvolvidas da ALCA, examina-se em que medida o atual panorama para produtores locais, naqueles segmentos, viria a mudar diante das possibilidades…
Resumen Durante el vigesimoctavo y el vigesimonoveno períodos de sesiones de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) realizados en México en abril de 2000 y en Brasilia en mayo de 2002, respectivamente, la Secretaría Ejecutiva de CEPAL preparó los documentos centrales: Equidad, Desarrollo y Ciudadanía (2000) y Globalización y Desarrollo (2002), que representan el pensamiento de la institución sobre los actuales retos del desarrollo de la región. En ambos documentos, surgen temas innovadores relativos al concepto de ciudadanía, cohesión social y desarrollo sostenible, así…
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