Estrategias de búsqueda de empleo en Trinidad y Tabago

Los niveles nacionales de desempleo en Trinidad y Tabago han permanecido altos desde los años ochenta, debido a la recesión económica, las medidas ulteriores de ajuste estructural y la disminución de actividades tradicionales con uso intensivo de mano de obra, como la agricultura de plantación. Los grupos que habían dependido del empleo ocasional disponible en épocas previas a la recesión han venido experimentando un desempleo crónico; combinan empleos ocasionales extremadamente irregulares con actividades en el sector informal y ocupan una posición marginal y precaria en el mercado laboral. E…

Why is there so much economic insecurity in Latin America?

The view that pervasive economic insecurity threatens political support for the ongoing market-oriented reforms has become one of the most common refrains in current discussions on Latin American affairs. Dealing with economic insecurity would thus appear to be a key part of the unfinished agenda of Latin America's reforms. The author argues that economic insecurity in Latin America is multifaceted and has many sources that feed on each other. Some of the insecurity arises from the decline in employment protection and increased volatility of household outcomes. Some of it is the result of…

Strengthening regional financial cooperation

The severe international financial crises which rocked the Latin American economies in the 1980s and 1990s suggest that the international financial system suffers from serious defects. This article looks at one of the reforms which has been mooted in recent years: strengthening regional financial cooperation. It concludes that a Latin American fund made up of a modest portion of the reserves of the countries of the region, possibly backed up with contingency credits from the international banking system, could be an effective line of defense against financial crises caused by capital flight an…

The Latin American social agenda in the year 2000

Now that the 1990s have ended and a new millennium is dawning, the low rate of economic growth, the region's vulnerability to international financial instability and the limited progress made in terms of equity oblige us to reflect on the social agenda for the future. An important role in that agenda will continue to be played by the efforts to overcome poverty and indigence, conditioned to a large extent by the region's capacity for economic change and its dynamism in creating large numbers of jobs of higher quality in terms of productivity and income. At the same time, in view of t…

Education and development in Brazil, 1995-2000

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…

Educational reform in Chile

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…

Social protection for the poor in Latin America

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…

Old and new forms of citizenship

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…

Industrial policy, comparative advantages and growth

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…

Job-seeking strategies in Trinidad and Tobago

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 …

Tourist cruises in South America: new opportunities and challenges

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…

Cruceros turísticos en América del Sur: nuevas oportunidades y desafíos

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…

Documentos presentados a la Primera Reunión de la Conferencia Estadística de las Américas de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe = Documents presented at the First Meeting of the Statistical Conference of the Americas of the...

Documentos presentados a la Primera Reunión de la Conferencia Estadística de las Américas de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe = Documents presented at the First Meeting of the Statistical Conference of the Americas of the...

Capital flows to Latin America: fourth quarter 2000

Panorama de la Inserción Internacional de América Latina y el Caribe 1999-2000

La edición 1999-2000 del Panorama de la inserción internacional de América Latina y el Caribe se divide en cuatro partes. En la primera, dedicada a la situación internacional (capítulos I y II), se describen las principales tendencias de la economía global, entre el inicio de 1999 y mediados de 2000 donde destacan las incertidumbres suscitadas por la integración entre las economías nacionales, los componentes estructurales del crecimiento reciente en los países industrializados, y los retos y oportunidades que éstos plantean al proceso de desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe. También s…

Consideraciones sobre el índice de Gini para medir la concentración del ingreso

(*) Fernando Medina es Asesor Regional en Estadísticas Sociales de la División de Estadística y Proyecciones Económicas de la CEPAL. Las opiniones expresadas en este documento, que no ha sido sometido a revisión editorial, son de exclusiva responsabilidad del autor y pueden no coincidir con las de la Organización. Resumen Uno de los indicadores sintéticos más utilizados para el análisis estadístico de la desigualdad es el denominado índice de Gini, debido -entre otros motivos- a su facilidad de cálculo y de interpretación. En este trabajo se examinan algunas de las propiedades de dic…

Política de apoyo a las pequeñas y medianas empresas: análisis del Programa de Reconversión Empresarial para las Exportaciones

Resumen En el marco del pensamiento económico y político que lideró el proceso de reestructuración macroeconómica en Argentina desde comienzos de los años noventa, se pusieron en marcha un conjunto de políticas e instrumentos específicos destinados a fomentar y facilitar la reconversión productiva y modernización empresarial del segmento de pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYME). Estos instrumentos fueron, por lo general, de un carácter muy diferente a los implementados en el pasado en varios sentidos. Por una parte, se intentó propiciar una mecánica de acción fuertemente basada desde la demanda,…

Un análisis de la competitividad de las exportaciones de prendas de vestir de Centroamérica utilizando los programas y la metodología CAN y MAGIC

Resumen El presente documento tiene dos objetivos principales. El primero consiste en desarrollar y presentar dos bases de datos elaboradas por la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) a fin de evaluar la competitividad de las exportaciones. El segundo es realizar una evaluación de la competitividad para Centroamérica en su conjunto y cada uno de sus países, con énfasis en la industria de prendas de vestir y confección para demostrar el alcance de los instrumentos desarrollados por la CEPAL. Adicionalmente, el documento examina en forma preliminar el impacto potencial que …

El comercio de los productos transgénicos: el estado del debate internacional

Resumen El surgimiento de los organismos genéticamente modificados o productos transgénicos, es decir, los productos agrícolas y alimenticios producidos por técnicas de ingeniería genética, ha planteado un sinnúmero de interrogantes acerca de los posibles efectos de estos productos en la bioseguridad y la biodiversidad agrícolas, además de abrir un amplio debate en torno de los riesgos de su consumo para la salud de los consumidores. Los organismos transgénicos involucran aspectos contradictorios. Por una parte, la manipulación genética de cultivos permite el desarrollo tanto de prod…