Abstract This paper examines the anatomy of the pervasive current job cuts and job losses occuring in multinational enterprises. It raises the question of the social and economic costs to countries and workers around the globe, and specifically in Latin America and the Caribbean. It analyzes the growing disempowerment of national authorities in the face of the significant growth and concentration of multinational corporations and their penetration in Latin America and combines current job cut information assembled by the author with the ECLAC Investment and Corporate Strategies Database for…
Abstract
Behind the discussion on optimal exchange-rate regimes lies the need to achieve external and internal equilibrium, and thus create an appropriate macroeconomic climate for sustained growth and development. The optimality and feasibility of exchange-rate regimes in individual Latin American and Caribbean countries must take into consideration several parameters linked to microeconomics, open macroeconomics, and political economy aspects. More recently, the discussion has incorporated the regional dimension and the possibility of joining monetary unions to the set of feasible national s…
In the 1990s,Argentina received large amounts of foreign direct investment and the participation of multinational companies in the country's economy increased significantly. As during the import substitution industrialization period, the basic goal of multinationals is still to exploit the domestic market.Two differences from that period can be observed, however:access to the Brazilian market allows for greater economies of scale and specialization,and increased competition in many tradable sectors is forcing subsidiaries to bring their operations closer to international best practice. Th…
Introduction With the failure of the import-substituting industrialisation policies of the post-war period, Caribbean countries shifted to an export-promotion strategy in the 1980s. Export promotion inevitably demanded a shifting of the relative price and productivity of tradable goods and services. To provide the necessary incentives for export promotion, countries pursued a mixture of reforms and restructuring to attract investment and to promote the competitiveness of production and exchange. The period also coincided with a shift in the development paradigm of the developed countri…
Abstract In the relatively short history of Mercosur, the countries of the region have gone through wide macroeconomic fluctuations. Macroeconomic turbulence is not a novelty for Argentina, Brazil and their partners, but it has shown different features in recent years, particularly concerning the strength and nature of regional spillovers. Despite the asymmetries in size among the economies of the area and the low starting levels of trade, the rapid growth of intra-regional commerce until the last few years, and the feeling that there was a 'mercosur component' in the intern…
The concern with a gender dimension of macroeconomic policy stems from the mandate of the Beijing conference to review and implement policies aimed at achieving equitable access to economic resources. This paper examines some of the macroeconomic policies pursued in the Caribbean within the context of economic adjustment in order to understand the rationale for these polices to see whether and how gender analysis could contribute to a more equitable outcome. The aims and goals of macroeconomic policy are explained, against the background of the economic problems faced by the region since 1970.…
In this article, indicators of fiscal discretionality are estimated using a simple methodology, and in this way the cyclical component of the public accounts balance (i.e., the amounts of income and expenditure associated with transitory movements of the level of activity); is identified for a number of Latin American countries in the 1990s. The difference gives a measure of the discretional balance, which represents a medium-term indicator of the state of the public accounts. Budgetary rules which take account of these mechanisms not only ensure sustainability over time but also reduce the cy…
An ECLAC contribution to the meetings being held on the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA); Buenos Aires, April 2001
Foreword
The Division of Integration and International Trade of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); has prepared this document on the basis of official figures provided by the countries and from documents produced by the Division of Economic Development, the Division of Social Development, and the Statistics and Economic Projections Division.
ECLAC, in its capacity as a member of the Tripartite Committee, the other members bei…
This article seeks to summarize the results of some studies on the structure and dynamics of the big domestically owned industrial companies and groups in five Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico); and presents supplementary elements for placing them in an overall perspective. The studies include individual analyses of 46 leading companies (in Brazil, Chile and Colombia); and 15 economic groups with an industrial base (in Brazil and Mexico);, together with aggregated studies of such groups in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. In all cases, the studies were based…
The author describes the neoclassical restoration, which, from the 1970s onwards, took a radical approach to the search for a theory of development by attempting to fuse the particular characteristics of developing economies with the central ideas of economic theory. Intervention with the aim of furthering development was perceived not as a solution but as part of the problem, and adjustment programmes were oriented not so much towards correcting imbalances as towards establishing an economic structure close to neoclassical precepts. Several East Asian economies were chosen as examples of the …
Governments of the ECLAC region have promulgated labour regimes which support port workers' desire for stable wages and job security, isolate them from market signals and create cargo-handling monopolies. The advent of a global economy, the introduction of export-led growth policies, the acquisition of advanced cargo-handling equipment and electronic information systems, and the participation of private interests in the offer of port services permit enterprises to compare, purchase and employ raw materials, labour and service inputs worldwide, and have transformed the traditional concept …
The large capital inflows into some Latin American countries since 1990 are a mixed blessing, for they widen the trade-off between disinflation at home and competitiveness abroad. A large part of the flows seems to be temporary rather than permanent. Permanent flows should be accommodated by an upward float of the currency, temporary flows by sterilized intervention on the foreign exchange market. Recent evidence suggests that sterilized intervention is more effective and carries lower fiscal costs than is often maintained. Asian policy practice suggests ways of sterilized intervention even wi…
22 - 24 May
2019, 08:35
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Evento (Reuniones y seminarios técnicos)
At the request of UNESCO, ECLAC participated in the 4th International Conference on TVET in the Caribbean, which took place in Montego Bay, Jamaica on May 22-24, 2019. There, ECLAC presented the results of the ECLAC-Government of Norway cooperation programme “Technical and vocational education and training for greater equality in Latin America and the Caribbean”. In particular, it shared lessons learned on the contribution of TVET to socioeconomic development and on the regional experience on financing of TVET.…
25 Oct 2023, 06:00 - 07:30
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Evento (Other events)
How is Japanese engagement with the region evolving to accommodate shifting global and regional conditions? What are the possibilities for enhanced Japan-Latin America cooperation on issues of shared concern, including food security, economic resilience, and the integrity of democratic institutions? In what sectors and countries has Japan’s involvement been most supportive of Latin America’s economic and political objectives to date, and can these examples be replicated in other parts of the region?…
11 Nov 2024, 07:00 - 09:00
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Evento (Meetings and technical symposiums)
Labour productivity has been on a declining trend in the Caribbean. An examination of this trend revealed a growing concern of skills mismatch in the labour market. At the same time, youth unemployment is high in many countries, with young women and girls twice as likely not to be in education, employment or training. These are troubling signs for human capital formation at a time when Caribbean economies are experiencing low growth, and the global economy is becoming increasingly knowledge based.…
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.…
Sustainable growth strategies depend critically on the role of the state in different societies, and the incentive structures associated with alternative institutional arrangements. In particular, in multi-level countries, incentive structure matter even more, as elements of game play between different levels of government becomes possible. Under these circumstances, organizational structures borrowed from advanced countries may not function as expected and could generate deleterious incentives. This paper focuses on the institutions and governance issues as preconditions for susta…
The eight Millennium Development Goals - which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV and AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015 - form a blueprint for tackling critical issues facing developing countries: poverty, hunger, inadequate education, gender inequality, child and maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, and environmental degradation. The Caribbean Millennium Development Goals Report 2010 reviews progress in the Caribbean subregion towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals on the basis of the most recent data available from official coun…