La elaboración de este documento se llevó a cabo en el marco del proyecto de cooperación técnica PAN/07/002 entre la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) y el Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas (MEF) de Panamá.SINTESISEn el período 1996-2007 la economía panameña mostró, en líneas generales, un buen desempeño ya que el producto interno bruto (PIB) creció a una tasa de 5,4% anual. El dinamismo fue mayor en el cuatrienio 2004-2007, en que el aumento del PIB llegó al 8,7%, con un 11,2% en el 2007. Así, el producto por habitante se incrementó a una tasa media anual del 3,5% dur…
Enormous differences in health within and between countries intertwine closely with degrees of social disadvantage, and when People's health is at the mercy of their individual situations, health-care inequalities can entail dramatic individual risks and costs. Promoting health equity can also be defended on the grounds that it simultaneously fosters economic development, since investments in health and its determinants contribute to economic growth, productivity and prosperity. On the other hand, economic growth by itself without appropriate policies to ensure reasonable fairness in the …
This essay argues that while the complete lack of liquiditycharacterizing the most severe phase of the financial crisis unleashedin September 2008 is now a thing of the past, lending and productionactivity in the industrialized countries are both contracting rapidly andthe financial system is still undercapitalized. Of all the external channelsthrough which the crisis has been transmitted to Latin America, the dropin remittances is the least important. The most widespread negative effectswill come from the decline in the volume of international trade and thesharp deterioration in the terms of …
One of the characteristics of globalization has been the markedvolatility of financial flows. The realization that this was affecting growth andequity induced the International Conference on Financing for Development,held in Monterrey in 2002, to adopt a global commitment to deal with theissue of development financing. Since then there has been a mixture ofprogress, backsliding and inaction. This article conducts a brief review offinancial globalization and the current global crisis. It then examines theMonterrey Consensus, the evaluations by the United Nations Secretariatof compliance with th…
The combination of profound technological change and theemergence of powerful competitors such as China and the other briccountries has led to dramatic shifts in competitiveness and a tendencyfor production to be structured around global value chains. Against thisbackground, traditional protectionist threats have reappeared and othershave arisen in connection with new security requirements, private-sectorquality standards, good practices and climate change. These issues areintegral to the new competitive environment but could turn into protectionistbarriers in the absence of the right multilat…
Few developing countries have succeeded in consistently closing theincome gap with the world's richest nations without proactive governmentaction in pursuit of economic transformation and a dynamic role in theglobal economy. Two factors are crucial here: the development andimplementation of a medium- and long-term strategy to achieve rapideconomic transformation, and the support provided to this strategy by apublic-private alliance forged by means of a social process suited to localconditions. This article analyses the way alliances of this kind operate in10 countries outside the region d…
This paper develops and tests a model of growth that emphasizesthe introduction of new exports as the main source of growth in countriesthat are well within the global technology frontier and depend for growthon adapting existing products to their economic environment. It seeks tocapture the stylized facts behind growth in countries as different as theRepublic of Korea, Taiwan Province of China, Mauritius, Finland, Chinaand Chile, all of which have relied on export diversification. The wideningof comparative advantage is thus seen as the main driver of economicgrowth. The export diversificatio…
This article reviews the formal institutional framework forimplementing rural development policies in Guatemala, which originatedin the State modernization process promoted through the Peace Accords.The main thesis is that rural development policies will be more efficientif they are based on the institutional framework that the Peace Accordsprovided, which distinguishes between three levels of government: central,deconcentrated and decentralized. While the two sub-national levelsexecute 43% of total public investment, central government needs to targetthe budget on poor zones, cut subsidies to…
This article analyses the various dimensions of the new poverty which emerged during the 1980s and 1990s. It begins with a review ofthe definitions of the term in Europe, the United States and several LatinAmerican countries. The case of Argentina is then examined, paying closeattention to the pauperization of the middle class in that country at severalpoints between the mid-1970s and the crisis of 2001. Structural poverty-an older phenomenon- is used as a point of reference to describethe characteristics of the new impoverishment, the adaptation strategiesevolved to address it usin…
Este trabajo analiza el problema de crecimiento económico lentode México. Descompone el aumento del producto por el lado de lademanda e ilustra la incidencia fundamental de la atonía de la inversión.Sostiene, con respaldo econométrico, que esa atonía se explica en partepor la apreciación real del peso durante la desinflación y su efectoadverso en la rentabilidad de la inversión. Por último, muestra que elproblema se ha complicado por una merma a largo plazo de la razónPIB/capital.…
Per capita GDP has grown more in 2003-2007 than at any other time since the 1970s. ECLAC projections indicate that this trend will continue in 2008, which will thus be the fifth year in a row in which per capita GDP has risen at over 3% per annum. This increase has made further progress in poverty reduction possible, together with a decline in unemployment. Some countries have seen improvements in income distribution as well. A number of problems persist, however, and Latin America continues to lag behind other regions in various areas. Levels of social and economic inequality remain extremely…
ResumenAunque no es un tema totalmente nuevo, recién en las dos últimas décadas la migración internacional se ha convertido en un tópico relevante de la agenda pública en Costa Rica. Es este el contexto en el que se desarrolla este estudio, que aborda numerosas dimensiones de este fenómeno social en el país, desde la caracterización demográfica y socioeconómica de los migrantes —a partir de dos fuentes principales: el censo de población de 2000 y la Encuesta de Hogares de Propósitos Múltiples de 2007— hasta el marco jurídico que lo norma.El primer capítulo se ocupa de la percepción política de…
El estudio sobre el desarrollo económico territorial o local ha adquirido desde finales del siglo anterior un gran relevancia y, seguramente será un tema central para durante el transcurso del presente ya que, probablemente, llegó para quedarse. Pero no de manera estática, disciplinar y reflexiva; ya que no pretende establecer normas o modelos con validez cuasi universal, sino que parte de la complejidad y la diversidad, que requiere por necesidad del abordaje interdisciplinario y que la reflexión vaya acompañada y sea partícipe de la acción. Tal vez, y de manera similar a lo acontecido a medi…
El propósito principal de este documento es analizar el proceso de internacionalización de la principal empresa eléctrica española en América Latina. El análisis hace especial hincapié en tres aspectos esenciales de tal proceso: i) la expansión de ENDESA a fines de los años noventa; ii) las decisiones adoptadas por esta empresa para hacer frente a los críticos escenarios que se configuraron en los primeros años de la década del 2000, y iii) el perfil actual de su inserción en América Latina.Las preguntas que este análisis ha intentado responder se refieren en primer término a la especificidad …
Port activity in Latin America and the Caribbean increased by nearly 60% between 2000 and 2007 in terms of metric tons of cargo
moved and nearly 130% in terms of containers, growing to 1.6
billion metric tons and roughly 32
million TEUs. Based on data provided
in the ECLAC Maritime Profile. This issue of the FAL Bulletin presents the main analytical data on port trends in the region.…
La actividad portuaria en América Latina y el Caribe aumentó casi 60% entre 2000 y 2007 según sus movimientos en toneladas
métricas y casi un 130% en contenedores, alcanzando una cifra de 1600 millones de toneladas métricas y casi 32 millones de TEU. Basado en informaciones contenidas en el Perfil Marítimo de la CEPAL,la presente edición del Boletín FAL exhibe los principales datos analíticos de la evolución portuaria en la región.…
The corporate world has changed remarkably in the past 10 years.New multinationals are appearing in countries with emerging marketssuch as Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Mexico, which are not onlytop recipients of foreign capital, but have fast become major investorsthemselves. An important part of the remarkable story of emergingmultinationals has been the eruption of world-class Latin multinationals(or multilatinas); from Mexico and Brazil, in particular, following the pathtaken by their Spanish counterparts in the 1990s. In all these cases,classical push and pull factors have been d…
El mundo empresarial cambió notablemente en los últimosdiez años. Han surgido nuevas empresas multinacionales en países demercados emergentes como Brasil, India, China, Sudáfrica y México,los que no solo son grandes receptores de capital extranjero sino queahora también invierten fuertemente en el exterior. En la notable historiade las nuevas multinacionales destaca la aparición de empresas quellamaremos multinacionales latinas (o multilatinas);, en particular deMéxico y Brasil, que tuvieron como precedente aquellas de España enlos años 1990. Las multilatinas surgieron merced a los clásicos fa…
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