Summary Fiscal performance showed modest improvement during the period under review. Deficits contracted and so did national debts. This was possible however only because of reduced spending since revenues - capital, recurrent, and grants in aid - fell. Governments found it easier to reduce spending on the purchase of goods and services and on gross investment rather than on wages and salaries or on transfers. In the countries which had experienced severe disequilibrium in the past and therefore had accumulated a large debt, the legacy of interest payments and amortization charges remained…
Summary An examination of first semester performance provided scant hope for a prosperous 1997. Preliminary indications suggested that output did not increase as quickly across the Caribbean as it did in the first semester of 1996. Fiscal deficits increased in most countries, mainly because of buoyant public spending.…
Summary
Reviews the current arrangements between the Caribbean Council for Science and Technology (CCST); and ECLAC and examines possibillities for future arrangements, involving varying degrees of administrative independence. The paper includes a history of CCST and a description of the Council's activities.…
This article aims to make a walk-through in the virtual reality of budgetary and fiscal matters in order to identify the possible degrees of freedom to achieve a higher level of convergence between the public discourse on equity and the real content of public policies aimed at that goal. To this end, the author explores possible answers to four questions: what is the current meaning of the concept of equity; how much leeway is there in the field of taxation for expanding resources and improving vertical equity; what means are there for giving priority to the objective of equity in managing pub…
Pension system reforms seek to combine and reconcile both economic and social functions. On the basis of both conceptual aspects and the actual experience of Chile, this article illustrates the difficulties encountered in trying to make reforms ensure the fulfillment of both types of functions. These difficulties stem from two factors: i); the need to consider the reform of the pension system as a whole, where, parallel with the capitalization component, it is necessary to develop another pay-as-you-go component to finance the costs of the transition from one pension system to another, minimum…
In recent years the question of the environment has been increasingly prominent in studies and proposals on the development of the Latin American and Caribbean countries. The serious processes of ecological imbalance in the world, together with numerous disasters and the ongoing loss of natural resources, have given rise to increasing concern over these matters. To a greater or lesser extent, all the governments of the region have tried to strengthen their environmental policies through various legal, technical, institutional and economic measures. Much still needs to be done, however, to corr…
An inventory and analysis has been made of 15 non-market-based valuation studies in Central American and Caribbean countries. The method most frequently used for determining the willingness to pay for drinking water or protected areas was that of contingent valuation. Its main shortcomings were that it was based on open questions, it used contingent scenarios and information frames with a low level of detail, it used small population samples, and it displayed the possible cultural and strategic skews associated with surveys of national residents. The study based on the travel cost method, for …
This article seeks to calculate a simple integrated macroeconomic model for the Caribbean subregion. Using a homogeneous data series covering the period from 1980 to 1991 for a sample of 12 countries of the subregion and a relatively simple model with non-conflicting specifications of structural relations, a representative and systematic group of estimates is generated for a given set of parameters, with grouped and individual calculations for the countries.…
Now that the neoliberal economic model, which is still in force as Latin America prepares to see out the milennium, has completed a number of years of application, it is becoming increasingly desirable to assess the experience gathered so far. Economists are busily engaged in this task by breaking down and analysing the various characteristics and components of the programmes applied in the different countries. An aspect which is often overlooked in these assessments, however, is the social and political viability of the measures adopted, which does not depend solely on their technical qualiti…
In the six Central American countries --Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, which make up the Central American Common Market, and Panama-- non-traditional exports increased in the 1970s, went down between 1980 and 1986 because of macroeconomic imbalances, armed conflicts and the crisis in the Central American Common Market, but grew once again in the second half of the 1980s and the early 1990s. Except in Nicaragua and Honduras, the share of such exports in total exports increased, reflecting the general trend towards modernization of the export structure and reduction …
This article aims to classify and analyze the efforts at structural change made in the Brazilian motor industry between 1990 and 1996, seeking to relate them with the economic policy measures which had most impact on the sector. The study begins by examining the explosive increase in domestic demand for motor vehicles, its determining factors, and its main implications, especially the achievement of efficient scales of production and the initiation of a wave of investments which has been further intensified in the last three years. It goes on to study the increase in the technological dynamism…
Processes of adjustment and restructuring of the production sectors to a new system of macroeconomic incentives are slow, costly and more inefficient than conventional microeconomic theory would lead one to suppose. In this article, the authors explore the process of the restructuring of production of a Chilean metal products and machinery company and the way it gradually modified its operations from the 1970s onwards, adapting them to new macroeconomic and mesoeconomic signals. As is well known, in the last two decades the system off incentives and the regulatory framework for production acti…
The generation dynamic competitive advantages in Latin America and the Caribbean cannot be assumed to result automatically from the achievement of the necessary macroeconomic stability and the incorporation of part of the system of production into some dynamic segments (or niches); of the international economy. Recent empirical information on local economic development initiatives in the developed countries indicates that macroeconomic adjustment policies must be accompanied by other specific policies at the microeconomic and mesoeconomic levels. These policies must incorporate the various loc…
Abstract Quality will play an increasingly important role in the objectives for the social and economic development of the countries in Latin America. This document aims to demonstrate the importance of quality in national strategies for increased productivity and competitiveness. Governments in the region have increasingly established programmes that promote and support the diffusion of quality management techniques. This tendency indicates that the diffusion of quality management innovations is complicated by market failures but is desirable from a national point of view. This document may t…
Resumen En el presente documento se hace una rese a de las principales innovaciones tecnológicas incorporadas a la actividad hortofrutícola chilena que apoya la tesis de que esas innovaciones han permitido obtener productos muy competitivos y con una presencia en los mercados internacionales bastante estable, y han dado origen a una experiencia con impactos muy amplios en toda la economía. Se analizan con algún detalle los diversos mercados que intervienen en esta actividad, comprobándose que en cada uno de ellos se han registrado sucesivos y sustantivos aumentos de calidad y valor en los prod…
La Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) ha querido abrir un espacio de debate en torno a problemas políticos, económicos y sociales relacionados con la producción, el tráfico y el consumo de drogas ilícitas en América Latina y el Caribe. Para ello convocó a un conjunto de expertos latinoamericanos a exponer y debatir sus convergencias y divergencias en la Reunión de Expertos sobre Economía y Consumo de Drogas Ilícitas en América Latina y el Caribe, realizada en la sede de la CEPAL en Santiago de Chile, del 13 al 15 de enero de 1997. En los meses que siguieron a di…
The World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 6 to 12 March 1995, brought together a large number of heads of State and Government and official representatives from States Members of the United Nations and culminated in the adoption of the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and the Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development. These two documents —the first containing policy statements, the other dealing with their practical application— imply commitments at the national, regional and international levels.
Barely two years have passed si…
Presentación Durante la semana del 6 al 12 de marzo de 1995, se llevó a cabo en Copenhague, Dinamarca, la Cumbre Mundial sobre Desarrollo Social. En ese encuentro, que reunió a numerosos Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno y a representantes gubernamentales de todos los países miembros de las Naciones Unidas, se emitió la Declaración de Copenhague sobre Desarrollo Social y el Programa de Acción de la Cumbre Mundial sobre Desarrollo Social. Ambos documentos --uno de enunciados políticos, otro de aplicación práctica-- entrañan compromisos a nivel nacional, regional e internacional. Han transcurrido es…