A América Latina e o Caribe demandam hoje perseverar em três direções para alcançar o necessário desenvolvimento: a mudança estrutural que permita avançar rumo a setores mais intensivos em conhecimento, a convergência para reduzir as brechas internas e externas de renda e produtividade, e a igualdade de direitos.
Isto supõe três grandes desafios: alcançar um crescimento sustentado a taxas elevadas, suficientes para fechar brechas estruturais e gerar empregos de qualidade; mudar os padrões de consumo e produção no contexto de uma verdadeira revolução tecnológica com sustentabilidade ambiental,…
Las familias desempeñan funciones esenciales como la socialización y el cuidado que son primordiales para el acceso de las personas al bienestar en un sentido amplio. Históricamente, las familias ejecutan tales funciones mediante arreglos diversos, en el contexto de las alternativas ofrecidas por las políticas públicas, el mercado y las organizaciones de la sociedad civil. Si, como en el pasado, las familias siguen siendo protagonistas del acceso al bienestar, entonces los cambios en su estructura y funcionamiento son un importante objeto de estudio, particularmente en América Latina, donde di…
Uno de los pilares del desarrollo de Costa Rica en las tres últimas décadas ha radicado en los
avances en la calidad de su inserción internacional. En dicho período, el país consiguió hacer crecer
ininterrumpidamente su ingreso por habitante a un ritmo del 3% anual (salvo en 2009, debido a la crisis
financiera mundial). Clave en este logro fue un crecimiento anual de casi un 10% del volumen de las
exportaciones de bienes y servicios entre 1990 y 2012. Con este desempeño Costa Rica se convirtió en
uno de los países más abiertos de América Latina en términos de la participación de las exportacio…
El presente estudio tiene como objetivo principal analizar el surgimiento del cuidado como problema público y su inclusión en la agenda social, política y gubernamental en el Uruguay. Se enmarca en el proyecto “Pactos sociales para una protección social más inclusiva” que lleva a cabo la División de Desarrollo Social de la CEPAL con el apoyo de la Agencia Alemana de Cooperación Internacional (GIZ) y se ha ejecutado en coordinación con la Dirección Nacional de Políticas Sociales del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (MIDES) del Uruguay.
Dicho proyecto plantea la interrogante de cómo construir, en…
Tanto en los estudios de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) como en los realizados por la Oficina Regional de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO, por sus siglas en inglés) había quedado de manifiesto la preocupación por los efectos de la volatilidad de los precios internacionales en las cadenas de valor de granos básicos en Centroamérica, situación que dio origen a esta investigación.
El objetivo del documento es contribuir al diseño de una metodología que permita estudiar los arreglos institucionales determinantes de la…
This report updates the analysis set out in the Preliminary Overview of Latin America and the Caribbean 2013,
released in December 2013, on the basis of official data published by the countries in the region in the subsequent
months, and presents a revised economic outlook for 2014. In addition, it examines the external factors influencing
the region’s performance and their impact on the different components of the balance of payments and summarizes
the challenges and main trends in relation to monetary, exchange-rate and fiscal policy. It confirms the deceleration
of growth analysed in the Pr…
En este informe se actualiza el análisis presentado en el Balance Preliminar de las Economías de América Latina y el Caribe 2013 (publicado en diciembre de 2013), sobre la base de los datos oficiales de los países de la región que fueron difundidos en los meses siguientes, y se revisan las perspectivas del desempeño económico del año en curso. Además, se presentan los factores externos que incidieron en el desempeño regional y su impacto en los diferentes componentes de la balanza de pagos y se resumen los retos y tendencias principales de las políticas monetaria, cambiaria y fiscal. Se confir…
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has been a pioneer in the field of disaster
assessment and in the development and dissemination of a disaster assessment methodology. Its approach involves
estimating the effects of a disaster on assets (damage) and economic flows (losses and additional costs) and takes
account of the economic, social and environmental impacts of disasters.
ECLAC studies in this area respond to the need to estimate the financial costs of a disaster with a view to
determining the amount of sector-specific funding needed for recovery and reconst…
This report is part of a series of national case studies aimed at disseminating knowledge on the current status of social protection systems in Latin American and Caribbean countries, and at discussing their main challenges in terms of realizing of the economic and social rights of the population and achieving key development goals, such as combating poverty and hunger.…
En el presente documento se describe la política y estrategia de evaluación de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL). El objetivo de esta política y estrategia es fortalecer la función de evaluación, aumentando al máximo la transparencia y la coherencia y asegurando un alto nivel de calidad en las evaluaciones. Se espera que esto, a su vez, contribuya en última instancia a una mayor rendición de cuentas y mejor desempeño y aprendizaje institucional en la CEPAL. La política de la Comisión se ha establecido de conformidad con el Reglamento y Reglamentación de la Secreta…
The document which ECLAC presents on this occasion explores further the theme of equality addressed at the two previous sessions of the Commission, in Time for Equality: Closing Gaps, Opening Trails (2010, Brasilia), and Structural Change for Equality: An Integrated Approach to Development (2012, San Salvador).
The document prepared for the thirty-fifth session, entitled Compacts for Equality: Towards a Sustainable Future, discusses the two major challenges to development in Latin America and the Caribbean today: to achieve greater equality and to make development sustainable for future genera…
El documento que la CEPAL da a conocer en esta ocasión profundiza en la línea de la igualdad de los presentados en sus dos anteriores períodos de sesiones: La hora de la igualdad: brechas por cerrar, caminos por abrir (2010, Brasilia), y Cambio estructural para la igualdad: Una visión integrada del desarrollo (2012, El Salvador).
Bajo el título Pactos para la igualdad: hacia un futuro sostenible, el actual documento de posición plantea los dos grandes retos que enfrenta el desarrollo en América Latina y el Caribe: lograr mayores grados de igualdad y procurar sostenibilidad en la dinámica del d…
Cloud computing is not a stand-alone technology, but rather a mix of a large set of various technologies. Although based upon previous trajectories, recent progress in virtualization, storage, connectivity and processing have come together to create a new ecosystem. The result is a new paradigm extremely attractive from an economic perspective due to its capability to combine cost saving with increased flexibility to manage the ICT needs of firms. The main characteristics of cloud computing are as follows: High degree of abstraction of the user from the physical and technological characteristi…
This paper analyses the viability, implications and challenges of expanding the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR) to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Paraguay. A regional reserve fund should be viewed as one of a broad range of mechanisms offered by the international financial architecture to address balance-of-payment difficulties. A fund with resources of between US$ 9 and US$ 10 billion at its disposal would be able to cover the potential funding needs of its members in the most likely scenarios, without necessarily becoming the lender of last resort for all its members. In more extrem…
The Human Development Index (HDI) is an indicator designed to track the development of countries in respect of three dimensions of development: health, education and income. Since it was first published in 1990, great efforts have been made to improve hdi, which, as has been stressed on numerous occasions, cannot be seen as a definitive measure of development. This paper includes a reflection on what constitutes human development, the pillars underpinning it and two new dimensions that should be incorporated into hdi (employment and political freedoms) for it to better express progress in deve…
This study draws on household survey results spanning a period of three decades in length to analyse young people's entry into the labour market in 10 Latin American countries. It finds that: (i) the employment status of young people had deteriorated over time until seeing an improvement in the late 2000s, although youth unemployment and informality rates are still very high; (ii) young people are entering into a typical employment cycle in which they are surpassing the results obtained by adults of earlier generations. Informality is not a part of this pattern, however, indicating the ex…
Evidence suggests that labour markets do not clear as posited by conventional microeconomics. The enduring inter-industry wage differentials (IIWD) and employer-size wage differentials (ESWD) present a challenge. Data from the Jamaican private sector reveal that eswd could be the impetus for IIWD. After accounting for labour quality and other characteristics, employers with 10 to 49 employees and 50 or more employees pay estimated premiums of 14.3% and 22.9%, respectively. After estimating the differences in tenure profiles, the premium associated with the largest employer size was reduced to …
Despite its importance, the literature on wage differentials between public- and private-sectors employees in Latin America is sparse. This article analyses the wage gap between the two sectors in Chile, based on monthly longitudinal data obtained from the Social Protection Survey (EPS) for the period 2002-2009. The study takes advantage of the panel structure of the data to control for time-invariant observable and unobservable factors that determine the self-selection of workers between sectors and wages. The results show that the wage differential between workers in the public and private s…
This paper provides empirical evidence to assess the impact of socioeconomic and political variables on different measures of income inequality based on the 27 units of the Brazilian federation in the period from 1999 to 2008. The Brazilian experience is a good example for understanding the income inequality policies in developing countries. The findings suggest that the improvement observed along the period under analysis is a result of the combination of increased trade openness, technological and financial development, a reduction in the unemployment rate, the adoption of social policies th…
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…