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on Central and South America |
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Issue of 2006‒06‒24
seven papers chosen by |
| By: | Hernán Jaramillo Salazar; María Alejandra Botiva; Andrés Zambrano |
| Abstract: | Este artículo muestra la relación existente entre las políticas de Ciencia y Tecnología (CyT) y los resultados que éstas han producido a través del gasto en CyT, como indicador de insumo, y de las publicaciones, como indicador producto. El documento describe el proceso histórico que ha tenido el sistema a través de la construcción y acumulación de capacidades, éste es dividido en cuatro etapas. Por su parte, el gasto en CyT presenta un aumento de recursos hasta 1996, a partir de allí se da un decrecimiento. Este gasto proviene, en su mayoría, del sector público a través de créditos externos. Las publicaciones muestran un rendimiento sobresaliente de Colombia en términos de crecimiento, aunque los números absolutos sean todavía muy pequeños. Dichas tasas de crecimiento muestran una correspondencia con la financiación de la CyT y con la acumulación de capacidades del sistema de innovación. |
| Date: | 2004–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:001052:002518&r=lam |
| By: | Pedro Cavalcanti Gomes Ferreira (EPGE/FGV); Carlos Hamilton Vasconcelos Araújo (Banco Central do Brasil) |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fgv:epgewp:613&r=lam |
| By: | Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann D. (Universität Göttingen, Ibero-Amerika Institut); Dierk Herzer (Universität Frankfurt / Universität Göttingen); Sebastian Vollmer (Universität Göttingen, Ibero-Amerika Institut); Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso (Universität Göttingen, Ibero Amerika Institut) |
| Abstract: | It is the objective of this paper to analyze Chile’s development of market shares in the EU market in the period of 1988 to 2002, testing for the impact of price competitiveness on market shares with panel data. Price competitiveness is considered a decisive determinant of Chile’s market shares since Chile’s successful export products are rather homogeneous products (fish, fruit, beverages, ores, copper, and wood and products thereof). Six EU countries, namely France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, with perceptible imports from Chile in the above-mentioned sectors, serve as cross-sections in this study. It is found that Chile’s market shares in all seven sectors under investigation were unstable in economic terms in the 1988-2002 period. From a statistical point of view market shares were non-stationary variables, integrated of order one (I(1)) and so were Chile’s relatives prices and its competitors’ relative prices, which turned out to be I(1), too. All variables being I(1), a panel cointegration test was conducted. Pedroni’s residual based cointegration test revealed cointegration between market shares and relative prices in all seven sectors allowing regression coefficients to be estimated by means of Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS). The DOLS results were then compared with the ones obtained by the Three Stage Feasible Generalized Least Squares (3SFGLS) and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) technique. |
| Keywords: | Market shares, panel unit root tests, panel cointegration tests, panel DOLS modeling, 3SLS - |
| JEL: | F14 F17 C23 |
| Date: | 2006–06–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:iaidps:139&r=lam |
| By: | Stephan Klasen (Universität Göttingen) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze the potential and limitations of macroeconomic policy to affect propoor growth in Bolivia. After discussing the possibility to use macro policy to affect pro-poor growth in general, I then turn to the case of Bolivia, a highly dualistic small open economy that undertook significant macroeconomic and structural reforms in the 1990s. We show that the growth these reforms generated was generally pro-poor in the 1990s but was not enough to achieve significant poverty reduction due to high levels of initial inequality. It also made the country more vulnerable to external shocks which forced the economy into an anti-poor contraction after 1998. Using a dynamic CGE model we demonstrate that there are only limited options for pro-poor macro policy which is particularly due to the low domestic savings rate and the high rate of dollarization of the economy. Consequently, in order to increase the options for pro-poor macro policy, the large inequality, the high dualism, the low savings rate, and high dollarization of the economy need to be addressed. |
| Keywords: | Pro-Poor Growth, Bolivia, CGE model, dollarization |
| JEL: | O1 I32 C68 |
| Date: | 2006–06–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:iaidps:143&r=lam |
| By: | Hugo Nopo (Inter-American Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the evolution of the gender wage gap in Chile during the period 1992 to 2003 using the decomposition approach developed in Ñopo (2004). This approach, which decomposes the wage gap into four additive elements, stresses the need for comparisons inside the common support for the distributions of observable characteristics of individuals. Also, it allows an analysis of the distribution of unexplained differences in wages (not only the averages). The results suggest that, besides the high educational attainment of females, there are noticeable gender wage gaps in Chile favoring males. These unexplained differences in wages, which move around 25 percent of average female wages, show no clear tendency during the period of analysis. The wage gaps are higher at the highest percentiles of the wage distribution, among those with higher educational attainment, among directors and among part-time workers. The technique also detects some evidence of a glass-ceiling effect in Chilean labor markets, such that for some occupations and particular combinations of observable characteristics, there are highly paid males but not females. |
| Keywords: | Matching; Non-parametric; Gender Wage Gap; Latin America |
| JEL: | C14 D31 J16 O54 |
| Date: | 2006–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:wpaper:1021&r=lam |
| By: | Eduardo A. Lora (Research Department, Inter-American Development Bank); Mauricio Olivera (George Washington University) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses the effects of total public debt (external and domestic) on social expenditure worldwide and in Latin America using an unbalanced panel of around 50 countries for the period 1985-2003. The most robust and important finding is that higher debt ratios do reduce social expenditures, as popular opinion holds. This effect comes mostly from the stock of debt and not from debt service payments, indicating that debt displaces social expenditures not so much because it raises the debt burden, but because it reduces the room (or the appetite) for further indebtedness. Loans from multilateral organizations like the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank do not seem to ameliorate the adverse consequences of debt on social expenditures. In accordance with popular wisdom, our results indicate that defaulting on debt obligations does help to increase social expenditures. Nonetheless, Latin America is different in some respects. The adverse effects of debt and debt-interest payments are significantly stronger in the region, which makes defaults more beneficial to social expenditures. While many of these conclusions are very heterodox, their main policy implication is not; there is no better way to protect social expenditures than to avoid overindebtedness,especially in Latin America. |
| Keywords: | Public debt, social expenditure, Latin America, debt burden, interest payments, international financial institutions, external debt, default. |
| Date: | 2006–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:wpaper:2005&r=lam |
| By: | Manuel Agosin; Ennio Rodríguez |
| Abstract: | En enero de 2004, los países de América Central concluyeron las negociaciones con Estados Unidos para la firma del Tratado de Libre Comercio: el Acuerdo de Libre Comercio Centroamericano (Central American Free Trade Agreement - CAFTA), que marcará la trayectoria de su desarrollo económico por varias décadas. El objetivo de este trabajo es contribuir a la discusión de los grandes desafíos que va a enfrentar América Central en su preparación para el cambio en precios relativos que enfrentarán los productores de la región, cambios que conllevarán nuevas oportunidades como también importantes ajustes en los patrones actuales de producción |
| Keywords: | Free trade, Trade agreements, CAFTA, Competitiveness, Taxation |
| JEL: | F13 F15 F16 |
| Date: | 2006–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:intalp:102&r=lam |