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on Central and South America |
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Issue of 2018‒12‒03
six papers chosen by |
| By: | Paula Carrasco (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Alejandro Cichevski (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Ivone Perazzo (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | This document describes the evolution of the Uruguayan Labour Market during the last decade, disaggregating the main indicators by categories such as sex, age and region. In a context of economic growth (53.7% of GDP growth in this period), all of the main Labour Market indicators improved. The Activity Rate and the Employment Rate increased 2.7 and 4.3 p.p. while the overall quality of the jobs also improved. Also, there was a reduction in the average hours worked and a growth of the apparent labour productivity (40.5%), wages per hour increased by 32% and inequiality, measured by the Gini coefficient, went down by 10 p.p. However, there are still vulnerable groups that experience difficulties entering in the Labour Market (the youth unemployment rate is over 20%, women´s activity rate is 20 p.p. less than men´s and this difference is bigger in the active population with lower educational levels) and there are several groups with poor quality jobs (young workers, people with low educational levels and self-employed). Certain regions of Uruguay continue to have problems with the quality of jobs (in the North and Northeastern regions the percentage of workers without pension rights were 34.2% and 41.5, respectively). |
| Keywords: | labor market, Uruguay, quality of the jobs, labor earnings |
| JEL: | J01 J08 J3 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-09-18&r=lam |
| By: | Guillermo Lezama (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Departamento de Economía); Henry Willebald (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | We propose different alternatives of inequality estimation for economies with a big agricultural sector where land is a decisive factor in income generation and where we do not have enough information about personal earnings. To this end, we use the Uruguayan case to test our methodology, because: (i) Uruguay’s economy has the characteristics described above; (ii) we have some information available about incomes and economically active population in agriculture and (iii) we can also contrast our series with previous estimates. We propose six analytical exercises where Gini indexes are calculated, and as reference we choose the estimation that better adjusts to some theoretical and empirical conditions. Finally, we check the historical accuracy of the series by looking at explanatory variables of income distribution and the shape of the Inequality possibility frontier. Our results are consistent with the economic and social events of the period (1870-1912) and with previous estimates which reveal worsening trends in income distribution. Our annual data allow capturing the dynamics of the process where breaks in the series are observed and improvements and declines alternate in the evolution of income distribution. |
| Keywords: | income inequality, historical statistics, First Globalization, Gini, Uruguay |
| JEL: | N36 O15 D31 |
| Date: | 2018–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-06-18&r=lam |
| By: | Silvia Altmark (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Estadística); Karina Larruina (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Estadística); Gabriela Mordecki (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze Uruguayans living abroad that visit Uruguay for their holidays, what in the literature is called Nostalgic tourism or Visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tourism. Several studies point Uruguay as one of the South American countries with the largest proportion of its population living abroad. In addition, tourism is a very important economic activity in Uruguay. Visitors from Argentina have been always the majority in the Uruguayan inbound tourism. During 2017 in Uruguay 68% of total tourists were Argentinians, 12,5% Brazilians, and 8% VFR tourists. This last share was near 16% during the first decade of this century and even higher in the XXth. century. We analyze and estimate the VFR tourism demand in Uruguay, and compare it with Argentinian tourist demand, since the majority of VFR tourists live in Argentina (64%). After characterizing VFR tourists, we apply Johansen methodology and built four models: two for VFR tourism and two for Argentinian tourism, considering monthly data for the number of tourists and quarterly data for tourists’ expenditure. Applying Johansen methodology, we found at least one Vector error-correction model (VEC) equation for each model considered. In the first two models (taking into account the number of tourists), the elasticities (income and prices) were smaller for VFR tourists compared with Argentinian tourists, meaning that the number of VFR tourists react less to changes in income or relative prices than Argentinians. But in the case of tourists’ expenditure, the result was the opposite, with VFR tourists responding more to changes in prices or income than Argentinians. Impulse response functions show a greater reaction of Argentinian tourists to changes in relative prices, but similar in the case of an income shock. Finally, forecasts show a good adjust of the forecast to actual data. |
| Keywords: | VFR tourism, real exchange rate, Uruguay, cointegration |
| JEL: | C22 F41 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-08-18&r=lam |
| By: | Mauricio De Rosa (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | Wealth inequality is arguably one of the key drivers of overall economic distribution and of major importance in its own right. However, relatively little is known about it, particularly in the developing world. In this article, Uruguay's wealth distribution and composition in 2012 are estimated -for the rst time-, based on the capitalization method. Wealth distribution estimations are mainly based on very detailed tax micro-data and own estimations of aggregate national wealth. Results show that at least one third of total wealth is owned by the wealthiest 1% and top 10%´s share is almost 60%, whilst 35% is owned by the "middle 40". Financial wealth and business property in particular are heavily concentrated among the wealthiest 1%. Sensitivity tests are performed to assess the method's key assumptions, showing that main results are robust. Moreover, estimations are consistent with a novel household wealth survey and with real estate tax data. |
| Keywords: | Wealth distribution, capitalization method, tax records, developing coun- tries, Uruguay |
| JEL: | D31 E01 E22 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-07-18&r=lam |
| By: | Sharma, S.K.; Das, A. |
| Abstract: | Developing countries are demanding substantial reduction in trade distorting domestic support to agriculture sector by developed countries. Under the existing rules of the AoA, many developing countries are facing lack of policy space to implement measures like price support to increase the income of farmers. Some members of WTO circulated a proposal (EU-Brazil proposal) on OTDS, which seeks a cap on trade distorting spending. This study critically examines the implications of EU-Brazil proposal regarding OTDS on the flexibility for developing and developed countries member to provide domestic support to agriculture. The results of this study show that EU-Brazil proposal is likely to result in steep reduction in policy space for the developing countries. It will further curtail the limited and already insufficient policy space for implementing agricultural policies which are compatible with the socio-economic situation prevailing in the developing country members. On the other hand, USA and EU will undertake negligible or no reduction in trade distorting support to agriculture sector and these countries will preserve their existing flexibilities in future as well. Contrary to Doha Declaration, this proposal would provide special and differential treatment to EU and USA. Acknowledgement : |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae18:277493&r=lam |
| By: | Bibiana Lanzilotta (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Gabriela Mordecki (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Victoria Umpiérrez (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | It has been well documented by the macroeconomic literature the negative effects of economic policy instability on economic uncertainty and investment decisions. In changing environments, agents prefer to delay investment decisions in fixed capital, ultimately leading to the depression of economic activity. Uruguay, as a small and open economy of South America, has historically faced strong external shocks. Therefore, not only local instability of economic policy affects, also international and regional ones affect macroeconomic volatility and growth. With the objective of quantifying and analyzing uncertainty and volatility in the Uruguayan economy, we built an uncertainty composite index adapting the methodology proposed by Baker, Bloom & Davis (2015). In order to address how local and global economic policy uncertainty affects the volatility of the Uruguayan economy we include in the composite index, local and external uncertainty indicators. We represent local uncertainty by agent’s divergence on expectations about the future of the exchange rate. In order to account for both, regional and global shocks, we include uncertainty indicators of the relevant economic-world for Uruguay. Empirical strategy is based on a combination of statistical methods of principal components analysis and time series techniques. We test two alternative indexes, both of them starting in January 2004. Our results show that although both uncertainty indexes seem to be good predictors of the volatility for the whole period, they losses predictability power in the last years. |
| Keywords: | Political economic uncertainty, volatility, principal components analysis |
| JEL: | E32 C54 |
| Date: | 2018–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-05-18&r=lam |