Informe Estadístico de la Economía Brasileña, Noviembre-Diciembre 2013

A regional reserve fund for Latin America

El fortalecimiento del Fondo Latinoamericano de Reservas (FLAR) por la vía de expandir su tamaño y cobertura para incluir a un mayor número de países de la región sería un aporte importante a la provisión de un bien público regional y global como lo es la estabilidad financiera. Este trabajo intenta arrojar luz sobre la viabilidad, las implicancias y los desafíos, de una eventual ampliación del FLAR a otros cinco países de la región: Argentina, Brasil, Chile, México y Paraguay.…

Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy 2013: A sluggish postcrisis, mega trade negotiations and value chains: scope for regional action

The 2013 edition of Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy is subtitled “A sluggish postcrisis, mega trade negotiations and value chains: scope for regional action” and is made up of three chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the main features of the persistently weak global economy and lacklustre world trade and then turns to global and regional trade trends and prospects. Chapter II considers the main changes in the organization of production and global trade associated with international production networks, which are at the heart of the current mega-regional negotiations. It goes on t…

CEPAL Review no.111

Revista CEPAL no.111

Commercial bank financing for micro-enterprises and SMEs in Mexico

This article examines commercial bank lending strategies for micro-enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Mexico, and the factors that promote or hinder lending in this segment. With this in mind, in 2011 a detailed survey was conducted of commercial banks operating in Mexico. Although credit to microenterprises and smes still represents a small share of the loan portfolio, the survey results point to growing interest in broadening it. Three different business models were identified, with major differences in strategies for offering financial services to this segment of en…

A modelling framework for assessing the economic impact of climate change in the Caribbean

The eclac-Climate Impacts Assessment Model (CIAM) is a modelling platform that has been created to assess the economic consequences of climate change in the Caribbean. The model can be freely accessed, downloaded and even modified. The version available is a full-fledged model which can readily be used to conduct simulation exercises. This paper provides a general description of the model and an illustrative simulation exercise. Our results from this exercise highlight the fact that the Caribbean is a highly vulnerable region where climate change is expected to generate sizeable and negative e…

Motherhood wage penalties and labour market segmentation: Evidence from Argentina

This article explores the connection between labour market segregation and motherhood wage penalties in Argentina across the formal and informal sectors. It uses ordinary least square and quantile regression estimation strategies and deploys Blinder-Oaxaca and Ñopo decompositions to identify sources of wage differences. The finding is that there is strong evidence of labour market segmentation and that motherhood wage penalties differ substantively across the sectors and between different wage quantiles. In particular, formal-sector working mothers do not experience wage penalties, while infor…

Gender differences in workplace choices under crisis conditions

Working from home is an option that differs from other forms of employment. This type of employment is driven not only by globalization and outsourcing, but also by unequal gender relationships within the home. Two multi-logistic regressions were used to determine how the distribution of in-home working arrangements differs by sex and by male/female age range, level of education, marital status and degree of urbanization of the place of residence. The results suggest that these characteristics have a differential influence on men's and women's employment decisions. The results also i…

The structural heterogeneity of family farming in Brazil

Regional and productive inequality may stem from the agricultural modernization process, in which some agents are able to incorporate and absorb technological content, while others are excluded, not only from the innovative organizational environment, but also from learning processes and the dissemination of new production techniques and knowledge. This paper analyses family farming, by making comparisons in regional terms and by groups of producers using high, medium and low technology. It also calculates the productive inequality index (Gini coefficient of gross income) of the north, north-e…

An assessment of the dynamics between the permanent and transitory components of Mexico's output and unemployment

Previous studies about the relationship between the cyclical components of Mexico's output and unemployment suggest that it closely resembles that found in the economy of the United States of America. This would indicate that the dynamics between output and labour markets in the two economies are rather similar. However, these estimates are puzzling for they do not correspond to a characterization made to Mexico's labour market. Using a methodology first proposed by Clark (1989), we find that the correlation between the transitory components of output and unemployment is much lower t…

Evolution of the Caribbean Debt

The advance of cloud computing