Uno de los pilares del desarrollo de Costa Rica en las tres últimas décadas ha radicado en los
avances en la calidad de su inserción internacional. En dicho período, el país consiguió hacer crecer
ininterrumpidamente su ingreso por habitante a un ritmo del 3% anual (salvo en 2009, debido a la crisis
financiera mundial). Clave en este logro fue un crecimiento anual de casi un 10% del volumen de las
exportaciones de bienes y servicios entre 1990 y 2012. Con este desempeño Costa Rica se convirtió en
uno de los países más abiertos de América Latina en términos de la participación de las exportacio…
El presente estudio tiene como objetivo principal analizar el surgimiento del cuidado como problema público y su inclusión en la agenda social, política y gubernamental en el Uruguay. Se enmarca en el proyecto “Pactos sociales para una protección social más inclusiva” que lleva a cabo la División de Desarrollo Social de la CEPAL con el apoyo de la Agencia Alemana de Cooperación Internacional (GIZ) y se ha ejecutado en coordinación con la Dirección Nacional de Políticas Sociales del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (MIDES) del Uruguay.
Dicho proyecto plantea la interrogante de cómo construir, en…
Tanto en los estudios de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) como en los realizados por la Oficina Regional de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO, por sus siglas en inglés) había quedado de manifiesto la preocupación por los efectos de la volatilidad de los precios internacionales en las cadenas de valor de granos básicos en Centroamérica, situación que dio origen a esta investigación.
El objetivo del documento es contribuir al diseño de una metodología que permita estudiar los arreglos institucionales determinantes de la…
Cloud computing is not a stand-alone technology, but rather a mix of a large set of various technologies. Although based upon previous trajectories, recent progress in virtualization, storage, connectivity and processing have come together to create a new ecosystem. The result is a new paradigm extremely attractive from an economic perspective due to its capability to combine cost saving with increased flexibility to manage the ICT needs of firms. The main characteristics of cloud computing are as follows: High degree of abstraction of the user from the physical and technological characteristi…
The objective of this report is to analyze the impact of recent global financial trends on the access to private external financing by Central American and Caribbean (CAC) economies, as well as their performance in international capital markets in recent years. The CAC economies, like many other countries in the world, were not immune to the negative consequences of the global economic and financial crisis of 2008. In fact, their openness, export driven growth and linkages to advanced economies, particularly to the U.S., as well as size, made them more vulnerable than other Latin American coun…
This paper analyses the viability, implications and challenges of expanding the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR) to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Paraguay. A regional reserve fund should be viewed as one of a broad range of mechanisms offered by the international financial architecture to address balance-of-payment difficulties. A fund with resources of between US$ 9 and US$ 10 billion at its disposal would be able to cover the potential funding needs of its members in the most likely scenarios, without necessarily becoming the lender of last resort for all its members. In more extrem…
The Human Development Index (HDI) is an indicator designed to track the development of countries in respect of three dimensions of development: health, education and income. Since it was first published in 1990, great efforts have been made to improve hdi, which, as has been stressed on numerous occasions, cannot be seen as a definitive measure of development. This paper includes a reflection on what constitutes human development, the pillars underpinning it and two new dimensions that should be incorporated into hdi (employment and political freedoms) for it to better express progress in deve…
This study draws on household survey results spanning a period of three decades in length to analyse young people's entry into the labour market in 10 Latin American countries. It finds that: (i) the employment status of young people had deteriorated over time until seeing an improvement in the late 2000s, although youth unemployment and informality rates are still very high; (ii) young people are entering into a typical employment cycle in which they are surpassing the results obtained by adults of earlier generations. Informality is not a part of this pattern, however, indicating the ex…
Evidence suggests that labour markets do not clear as posited by conventional microeconomics. The enduring inter-industry wage differentials (IIWD) and employer-size wage differentials (ESWD) present a challenge. Data from the Jamaican private sector reveal that eswd could be the impetus for IIWD. After accounting for labour quality and other characteristics, employers with 10 to 49 employees and 50 or more employees pay estimated premiums of 14.3% and 22.9%, respectively. After estimating the differences in tenure profiles, the premium associated with the largest employer size was reduced to …
Despite its importance, the literature on wage differentials between public- and private-sectors employees in Latin America is sparse. This article analyses the wage gap between the two sectors in Chile, based on monthly longitudinal data obtained from the Social Protection Survey (EPS) for the period 2002-2009. The study takes advantage of the panel structure of the data to control for time-invariant observable and unobservable factors that determine the self-selection of workers between sectors and wages. The results show that the wage differential between workers in the public and private s…
This paper provides empirical evidence to assess the impact of socioeconomic and political variables on different measures of income inequality based on the 27 units of the Brazilian federation in the period from 1999 to 2008. The Brazilian experience is a good example for understanding the income inequality policies in developing countries. The findings suggest that the improvement observed along the period under analysis is a result of the combination of increased trade openness, technological and financial development, a reduction in the unemployment rate, the adoption of social policies th…
This study uses the capability approach to undertake a multidimensional analysis of deprivation in urban areas of Brazil between 2003 and 2008 based on a four-dimensional index (living conditions, health, level of education and participation in the labour market) constructed out of 13 different indicators. Its findings indicate that a majority of the population is living in households that are not experiencing deprivation and that, of those that are, the instance of deprivation is confined to a single indicator. When the results were then compared with the income-poverty index for the differen…
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effects of the Bolsa Família family conditional cash transfer programme (PBF) on beneficiary families' spending on food, fruit, meat and fish, poultry and eggs, green vegetables, cereals and oilseed products, flours and pastas, tuber and root vegetables, sugar, bakery products, alcoholic beverages, education, hygiene, health and school utensils. The estimation was based on microdata obtained from the 2008-2009 Brazilian Household Budget Survey; and the propensity-score matching methodology was used to calculate the average effect of the treatment o…
A variety of methodologies, such as the Foreign Trade Competitiveness Index, the Foreign Trade Policy Index and the Tradecan competitiveness matrix, reveal a process of adaptation to changes in world trade in the period from 2002 to 2012, within the context of the so-called complex adaptive system as a transition from the fourth to the fifth technological revolution in fresh asparagus exports from Peru. The country's competitiveness map shows that it is not competing globally at the international level but rather partially or regionally. Mexico is its main competitor, with com…
This article deals with the interaction between supply chains and territory, identifying two types of development: the enclave type of the rain-fed farming economy in the inland area known as the Secano Interior, and the potential linkage between this enclave and the greater metropolitan area of Concepción. The benefits of the forestry and cellulose supply chain, which is of global importance, are not spreading through its territory, which remains underdeveloped. Greater Concepción, the country's second most important industrial conurbation, has not succeeded in es…
This edition of the FAL Bulletin aims to present and encourage the use of the economic infrastructure investment database for Latin America and the Caribbean (EII-LAC-DB), built by the Infrastructure Services Unit of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The information contained refers to the period 1980-2012, in keeping with measurements undertaken by the World Bank, ECLAC and under the cooperation agreement between ECLAC and the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF).…
El presente Boletín FAL, tiene por objeto presentar y poner a disposición de los usuarios, la base de datos de inversiones en infraestructura económica de América Latina y el Caribe (EII-LAC-DB) construida por la Unidad de Servicios de Infraestructura de CEPAL. La información contenida en este Boletín FAL corresponde al periodo 1980-2012, según las mediciones realizadas por el Banco Mundial, la CEPAL y el acuerdo de cooperación entre CEPAL y CAF.…
This report updates the analysis set out in the Preliminary Overview of Latin America and the Caribbean 2013,
released in December 2013, on the basis of official data published by the countries in the region in the subsequent
months, and presents a revised economic outlook for 2014. In addition, it examines the external factors influencing
the region’s performance and their impact on the different components of the balance of payments and summarizes
the challenges and main trends in relation to monetary, exchange-rate and fiscal policy. It confirms the deceleration
of growth analysed in the Pr…