CEPAL Review no.80

Revista de la CEPAL no.80

Domestic Workers in Jamaica

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 …

Whither reform? Towards a new agenda for Latin America

The article outlines a new agenda for reform that focuses on what Latin American countries can do given the current international regime, and identifies the failings of the earlier reform agenda: i); the reforms increased countries' exposure to risk without increasing their capacity to cope with it; ii); the macroeconomic reforms were unbalanced; iii); the reforms pushed privatization and measures for strengthening the private sector, but placed too little weight on improving the public sector. The article further argues in favour of formulating a set of economic policies that reflect a b…

Globalization and financial crises in Latin America

This article focuses on the financial and currency crises that have occurred in the context of financial globalization in Latin America. It is divided into four sections. The first provides an overview of financial globalization in the last three decades. The second offers a model applicable both to the 1990s crises and those of the early 1980s. The third examines other experiences of globalization that did not lead to crises and analyses preventive measures in the light of these. The fourth reviews the routes that lead to segmented financial integration and touches on the problems of internat…

Has trade liberalization created pollution havens in Latin America?

This paper asks whether the recent trade liberalization in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico has led to increased transfer of polluting activities to Latin America. Using a factor content of trade approach, it shows that prior to liberalization, all three countries specialized in relatively pollution-intensive manufactures. Following liberalization, Argentina and Brazil have increased their specialization in such industries, while Mexico has moved in the opposite direction. It is suggested that these differences are a result of the structure of protection in the pre-liberalization period and the in…

Resolving international trade and investment disputes

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…

Social vulnerability, insurance and risk diversification in Latin America and the Caribbean

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…

Employment and structural mobility. Revisiting a Prebischian theme

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 …

Expectativas frustradas: el ciclo de la convertibilidad

El trabajo estudia el proceso que llevó a la crisis de la economía argentina. El análisis se concentra en la secuencia de decisiones, públicas y privadas, y en las cambiantes percepciones e incentivos que las motivaron. En los años noventa, la Argentina buscó definir un nuevo sendero de crecimiento. Durante buena parte del período de la convertibilidad, el comportamiento de los agentes (internos y externos) pareció basarse en la previsión de que la secuencia de ingresos presentes y futuros sostendría un valor del gasto interno mucho mayor que en el pasado. El go…

Deuda pública cierta y contingente: el caso de Colombia

Desafíos de la lucha contra la pobreza rural en la economía globalizada de América Latina: instituciones, mercados y proyectos

Estudios de caso de programas de lucha contra la pobreza en América Latina

Capital flows to Latin America: first quarter 2002

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%…

Istmo Centroamericano: los retos de la sustentabilidad en granos básicos

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 …

Cuba: evolución económica durante 2002 y perspectivas para 2003

Istmo Centroamericano: competitividad e integración regional, 2001-2003

Istmo Centroamericano: estadísticas de hidrocarburos, 2002

Regional integration in Latin America and dynamic gains from macroeconomic cooperation

The objective of this paper is to present and illustrate from a game-theory perspective, the main concepts and challenges behind macroeconomic policy cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Examples are taken from fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policies in a regional framework. Translating these concepts and examples into the economics of sub-regional integration, when countries have increasing commercial and financial relations, interact frequently and cannot escape from the consequences their decisions have on their partners, the paper contend that entering into a cooperative dyn…

The competitiveness of agrifoods in Central American and Caribbean countries in the context of trade liberalization

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…