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…
The objective of this paper is to explore the effects of globalization on the labour market and social stratification. It is generally held that globalization will bring about progress for nations and people. This, however, is far from clear, since the experience of almost two decades has been raising increasing doubts about the potential net gains and, particularly, the distribution of such gains. Clearly, there are winners and losers among both countries and people. We will concentrate on the effects upon people within countries and refer only to one region: Latin America. Our aim is to iden…
The economic reforms applied in the region during the 1980s and 1990s created expectations, for which there was theoretical justification, of strong job creation and greater equity in the labour market. This article analyses developments in the quantity and characteristics of employment during the 1990s. It concludes that today's labour market problems are due to insufficient economic growth and to less intensive use of labour, resulting mainly from changes in tradable goods-producing activities. Modernization of production methods in companies and sectoral restructuring that increased th…
Abstract The region ended the 1990s with mixed results in the area of economic and social planning. The outcomes of planning exercises have varied depending on what is understood by the planning process or system in each country (agents, agencies, subjects, knowledge, political agenda, procedures, resource-allocation, target-image, institutional framework and others). On point that does emerge, however, is the need for the State to have an agency or representative through which it can perform basic, irreplaceable planning duties, whatever the style of development or reform adopted. These inclu…
Summary
Capital flows returned to the Latin American in the 1990s after nearly a decade-long of the so-called debt crisis that featured a negative transfer of resources. These new capital flows were closely related to the economic reform process in the region. On the one hand, the reforms were a source of attraction for foreign investors. On the other hand, they helped the reforms succeed by relieving the external constraint that depressed growth during the 1980s.
Nevertheless, the new inflows also created problems. While average inflows in the 1990s were very similar to the amounts received b…
Abstract The Chilean experience with price-based capital account regulations (i.e., deposits or reserve requirements on capital inflows) has been subject to extensive discussion in the recent literature. This paper presents evidence on the effectiveness of similar regulations in Colombia since September 1993, when traditional exchange controls were replaced by price-based regulations. It is important to emphasize that the Tobin tax equivalent of such regulations in Colombia has been quite high (13.6% and 6.4% tax for 12 and 36 months loans, respectively, in 1994-1998), and, as in Chile, it is …
This article analyses the impact of public investment on private investment. Apart from purely ideological aspects, two opposing interpretations may be distinguished with regard to the relationship between these variables. The first is that there is competition between public and private investment, so that the former crowds out the latter. The second is that public investment is complementary to private investment in so far that, by generating positive externalities, it creates favourable conditions for the latter. In view of the relative scarcity of empirical studies on this matt…
The profound transformations undergone by the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean in recent decades have combined with a massive increase in the number of economically active women to produce significant changes in the labour market. Nonetheless, the indicators used to measure and describe this market have remained unchanged, despite the fact, which it is important to bear in mind, that they were designed for circumstances distinct from today's, with different participants and requirements in policy terms.
Although the importance of measuring the share in economic activity accoun…
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…
Trade among the ALADI countries has grown with exceptional vigour so far in the 1990s, especially in the branches of metal products, machinery and equipment, chemical products, and foodstuffs, beverages and tobacco. In order for this dynamic growth to be sustainable in the long term, these countries must develop their intra-industry trade by promoting reciprocal supply in those branches. The bulk of transnational productive capital in Latin America is concentrated in those branches, and it is in the metal products, machinery and equipment sector that the swiftest increase in intra-industry tra…
This study examines South-South economic relations in the context of regionalism. It covers three Latin American countries and eight high-performing Asian developing economies. Although the level of trade and investment between these two groups is currently very low, trade is growing fast and there are indications that the potential for continued growth exists. Although regionalism is advancing in both these parts of the world, it has so far not affected the ties between the two groups of countries, and in fact inter-regional trade growth has recently been exceeding intra-regional …
The external and internal imbalances that appeared in the early 1980s, together with the adjustment and stabilization policies applied throughout that decade in Latin America, juxtaposed the need to reduce the fiscal deficit with the need to make up for the loss of income sustained by the most vulnerable groups of the population as a consequence of the external debt crisis. This article examines patterns of social expenditure in a number of countries in the region, in an effort to determine how these policies affected the level and composition of social spending and, hence, influenced social p…
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on stabilization policies in conditions of high inflation in the light of the experience of Brazil and some other countries, especially the European monetary crises of the 1920s and the stabilization of the Argentine currency in 1991/1992. The paper begins with some comments on certain special features of situations of high inflation, with emphasis on the unfeasibility of following the sequence of measures recommended for dealing with only moderate imbalances. It goes on to criticise some aspects of the economic policy adopted in Brazil …
The side event will consider the need to integrate resilience-building into sustainable development planning and practice in the Caribbean, in light of the inescapable impact of climate change on the environmental, infrastructural, economic and social wellbeing of Caribbean states.
It is an opportunity for the UN community to reflect on the challenges faced by Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in building resilience, focusing in particular on the implications of size that compromise such efforts. Panelists will explore remedies through partnership and engagement with all stakeholders.…
Guided by an enhanced framework, UNCTAD led data collection field missions, identifying their current and potential external financial options, blockages and impediments to the uptake of innovative financial instruments, as well as the regulatory, institutional, and market-related changes required to encourage these innovations. These efforts culminated in the delivery of climate adaptation and mitigation reports for each country, assessing direct and indirect climate risks and proposing strategies to address these risks and achieve SDGs 17.4 and 13.b and will contribute to the regional d…
The Economic Survey of the Caribbean 2018 analyses the performance of the Caribbean subregion to the global economy. It provides a comparative analysis of global economic growth, commodity price performance, Caribbean growth performance, and unemployment. This is then followed by a subsection on fiscal policy and public debt. Subsequent subsections elaborate on monetary policy, and the external sector. Section II presents country briefs for the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, together with the member states of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union …
Twenty Government officials from Belize benefited from a one week workshop to build capacity in Conducting Public Expenditure Reviews (PERs), focusing on Applications for Education, Health, Agriculture and Social Protection. PERs are intended to align expenditures with government’s priorities. They are also intended to provide savings, either from expenditure reallocation or by reducing unproductive expenditures. In addition they improve fiscal management and can provide fiscal space especially when a country is experiencing high debt levels.
The workshop conducted by ECLAC Caribbean, wh…
U.S. economic growth disappointed in the first quarter of 2016, as global conditions continued to have an adverse impact. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s third estimate, the GDP grew at a 1.1% annualized pace in the first quarter, up from a previous estimate of 0.8%, and down from 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2015. Growth was under 1.5% for the last two quarters, the worst six-month performance in nearly three years.…
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…
Recently, Latin American countries have had to face the challenges of improving social inclusion and economic redistribution while consolidating democratic institutions after long periods of authoritarian regimes in many of them. Addressing pressure for social inclusion was all the more difficult, since these societies are characterized by some of the worst income disparities in the world and high degrees of labor market informality.
After the 70’s, the massive explosion of social demands in the transition to democracy transformed the region into a social laboratory aiming to promote social in…