Narrow Results

Water availability has been declining in recent years due to climate change. These decreases, in conjunction with rising temperatures and environmental changes, affect the behavior of various stakeholders, increasing the competition among water-consuming sectors to obtain this limited resource. In this study, we perform a hydro-economic model to analyze how the agricultural and residential sectors adapt to diverse climatic, social and regulation changes, using the Biobío basin in southern Chile as the case study. The model quantifies their economic welfare derived from using water as an input for their cropping activities and direct consumption, respectively, while maintaining environmental flows, rural drinking water, and supporting tourism activities. Furthermore, we assess the economic effects of increasing water security for the environment and tourism sectors. Results show that climate change and water security policies will have heterogeneous effects on water-consuming agents across different basin levels — higher-, medium-, and lower-basin levels — with the greatest effects being addressed by the higher-level basin. This heterogeneity is observed not only within the basin levels but also across economic sectors, being the agricultural sector significantly more affected by these policies than the residential sector. We conclude our analysis by suggesting that policymakers should tailor compensation measures to the most affected communities.

Knowledge-based development produces wealth and opens the frontiers of competitiveness, technological innovation and wealth distribution. In developed countries the process is intrinsically bound to the ability of innovative production and the dynamics of network knowledge construction. Within this process the academic and research communities participate effectively in the dynamics of knowledge and innovation, an environment strongly based on information and communication technology. However, when compared to the dynamics of developed countries, the formation of such communities in Latin America is rare. In this context CLARA (Latin American Cooperation in Advanced Networks) and ScienTI (Information and Knowledge Network in Science, Technology and Innovation) networks are strategies for the establishment, dissemination and foment of scientific knowledge in Latin America. CLARA integrates national academy networks in Latin America which links about 700 universities and research centers in the area. ScienTI network establishes and links scientific information sources in eleven countries within the area. The formation of a gigantic Latin American research community which links researchers, projects, and studies has an important role in building a world of science and education in the future. The formation and the functioning of the networks will be discussed from the community's knowledge building point of view in Latin America.

This paper presents a characterization and analysis of the content of academic production on innovation, published between 2008 and 2014 in Latin American journals with impact JCR (Journal Citation Report/WoS).^a During this period, Latin America countries began to consolidate their system of scientific research, promoting their participation in global publications. Journals were selected according to their discipline, and articles were characterized in terms of a set of basic attributes, including the type of study, methodology, area of study, and topics explored. The results of this study show that the innovation research until 2014 is quite limited, few studies, low study complexity, unsophisticated analysis techniques and research fragmentation, which makes it difficult to compare regions and countries. It also highlights the need for a research agenda, which includes the systematic study of the determinants and effects of innovation, deepens in aspects related to innovation management such as technological and organizational capabilities, and discusses the design of innovation systems.

This study uses an extensive sample of company data referring to seven Latin American countries to analyze the potential influence of simultaneity and heterogeneity in determining decisions to commit to R&D and innovation outputs. First, the analysis focuses on the decisions about spending on in-house and external research. Second, the outcomes of three different innovations: process, product, and organizational. Choices were considered simultaneously by employing a multivariate probit estimation model. In so doing, the enquiry considered the possible systematic interdependencies among the decisions. The results indicate that the two R&D decisions are interdependent. However, a different picture emerged in relation to innovation outputs, in which the correlations coefficients were small with unexpected signs. This may indicate a structural weakness of the technological production system in Latin America, wherein the synergies, complementarities, and complex relationships usually involved in the process of innovation are not fully developed.

This paper focuses on the most recent trends of Chinese finance (foreign direct investment (FDI) and development loans) in Latin America and their impact on economic development. In particular, this paper explores the economic and institutional factors that attract loans and FDI from China to Latin America. Based on data from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the United Nations on Chinese FDI and development loans to Latin America, this article argues that Chinese capital flows to the region, rather than politically motivated, are mainly motivated by trade interests, the evolution of the market of commodities, and natural resources-related policy goals. These capital flows are functional to the Chinese government’s use of soft power in the region, but these goals are secondary to market-based interests.

China’s raw materials diplomacy and unregulated purchasing of minerals in Africa and Latin America, as well as its domestic raw materials export quota, have for years been eyed with suspicion by state and private actors. Industrialized countries want to uphold and extend free market access to raw materials, but also strengthen their political accountability and sustainability. However, critics argue that in contrast, China, the world’s largest metals and minerals trading power, has taken the opposite course, ignoring social and environmental standards, reinforcing authoritarian governments, and erecting trade barriers. China is faced with several interrelated challenges in its resource diplomacy and governance. This article claims that an identifiable, chronological connection and pattern has existed between China’s aid and investment diplomacy for resources since the late 1990s, free trade agreements since the 2000s, Beijing’s resource nationalism since the 2010s, and the reform process of national and privately organized transnational governance toward sustainability in the present day. Is China socializing with emerging transnational standards on mining and resource extraction in the developing world, and if so, why? This article argues that China’s raw materials governance, including corporate governance, has entered a phase of reform to pacify the external environment and to implement the Belt and Road Initiative. In theoretical terms, China’s raw materials governance will continue to emphasize neoliberal and neo-mercantilist goals, cushioned by globalist features.

Although a large body of literature deals with the concept of globalization, the study of the relationship between globalization and entrepreneurship is an unchartered territory. We look at data from eighteen Latin American and Caribbean countries over a fifteen-year time span. Our findings indicate that de facto economic, social, trade and interpersonal globalization are negatively related to female and male entrepreneurial activities. De facto political globalization is the only category of globalization this study finds to be related positively to entrepreneurial activity (male and female), which implies policymaking may be a viable manner to encourage entrepreneurial activities. Political shifts to encourage females to undertake entrepreneurial activities can be seen across the globe.

Historical records of socio-environmental impacts related to large-scale iron ore development in Brazil are driving different planning approaches in the burgeoning iron mining and smelting complex of Corumbá, located at the border of the Pantanal ecosystem in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Among the most relevant efforts are two strategic environmental assessments (SEA): one was led by a mining company and the other by a civil society committee. This paper assesses to what extent these SEAs can contribute to the mitigation of negative socio-environmental impacts of the Corumbá Complex. It also evaluates if the SEA methodologies meet a number of SEA Performance Criteria. The analyses, which were based on literature reviews and content analysis of the SEA documents, reveal that the two SEAs represent an important effort to incorporate environmental variables into more strategic levels of the Pantanal region's planning. Nonetheless, both SEAs have serious limitations, given that they are not formally nested in governmental policies, plans and programmes.

This paper provides a novel perspective in determining the Granger causality of sentiment across the US, Latin America, Eurozone, Japan and Asia (excluding Japan), based on monthly data covering the period of January 2003–November 2017. Using a survey-based sentiment index of “sentix”, our results suggest strong evidence of nonlinearity and structural breaks making the use of linear causality models unreliable. Using a kernel-based multivariate nonlinear causality test, we find that causality runs from Eurozone to the US, Asia and Japan, with Japan also causing the Eurozone sentiment, and Latin America causing the Japanese sentiment. Interestingly, when we apply rolling estimations to detect time-varying causality for the cases of Eurozone and the US, Eurozone and Asia, Eurozone and Japan and Latin America and Japan, the results suggest evidence of bidirectional spillovers during certain months of the recent global financial crisis, and thereafter. Overall, our findings indicate that the sentiments of Japan, Asia and the US are related quite strongly with that of the Eurozone, as well as the sentiments of Japan and Latin America.

The number of global COVID19 cases has just exceeded 15 million, and there is mounting evidence for a devastating economic impact from this illness. Although COVID19 affected primarily China, Europe, and North America during the first half of 2020, now this disease is accelerating in the resource-poor nations of the Global South. Across Latin America, South Asia, and Africa, COVID19 is expected to push up to 100 million people into extreme poverty, eroding many of the economic gains achieved over the last five years. COVID19 vaccines will be required to help control the pandemic, especially in low- and middle-income nations. These will have important health benefits, but might also prevent further economic devastation. The term “antipoverty vaccines” has been used to refer to vaccines to prevent neglected tropical diseases that affect worker productivity, child development, and the health of girls and women. COVID19 vaccines could also become important antipoverty technologies provided we find ways to scale and distribute them as affordable vaccines. Two vaccines now being accelerated for global health include whole inactivated virus and recombinant protein vaccines. These might become essential tools for combating global poverty.

We describe expansion patterns by US companies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) between 1980 and 2005 using a unique sample that utilizes country, industry and time-series information on firms’ investments. We build on previous research to explore the effect of experience on firms’ preference for equity commitment. Using the time-series properties of our data, we examine the extent to which previous investments in the region influence firms’ expansion patterns. Our analysis includes the traditional determinants of entry mode choices such as firm-specific factors, market-seeking factors, resource-seeking factors and country-specific factors. Bivariate probit results indicate that companies with previous experience in the region are more likely to commit equity going forward and this also holds for more recent companies with greater growth opportunities.

This paper assesses the welfare effects of integration in Latin America. It estimates trade creation and diversion of: 1) integration of the four Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) and 2) amalgamation of Mercosur with the Andean group (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru). The method used to proxy trade creation is the change in total imports of a country from before to after integration, while trade diversion is proxied by the change in the country’s external imports between the two periods. A “control country” approach is used to hold constant the effects on imports of factors other than integration, such as income and price changes. With some exceptions Latin American integration was found beneficial to welfare in that trade creation exceeded trade diversion.

This paper analyzes the long-run relationship between labor share and its determinants for 20 Latin American countries from 1980 to 2014. Using the pooled mean group estimator, we find evidence that technological change, the globalization process, and financial integration, have contributed to the decline of labor share in Latin America. We also find evidence of the importance of institutional factors and public spending for the labor share. Finally, we discuss the role of the informal sector on the dynamics of the decline. Our key findings are robust to various specifications and methodologies.

There is a belief that the Chinese economy competes with the Latin-American ones for investment flows. Here we analyze the determinants of the US FDI outflows to the most representative Latin-American economies. We develop such assessments with a double-procedure cointegration analysis based on the time-series methodologies of Toda and Yamamoto (1995) and Liu, Song and Romilly (1997). The results suggest that long-run investment to the Latin-American region mainly depends on the performance of the US economy. Furthermore, they suggest the existence of a substitution effect between the Latin American countries and China for US investment flows.

This paper estimates the effect of trade liberalization on import performance of selected Latin American countries (which account for about 85 per cent of total Latin America imports). The novelty of this study is that it applies a long-term approach covering the whole XX century using times series and panel data analyses. The empirical exercise shows that the relationship between (lower) tariffs and import growth in Latin America cannot be taken for granted, as it often happens in the literature, and whenever it exists, it is not always quantitatively substantial. In particular, our analysis shows the existence of a long run relationship between tariffs and imports only from the second half of the XX century. It follows that trade liberalization appears effective in fostering Latin America's trade growth only when integrated within a wider process, implying a multilateral and negotiated approach to trade policy. In this sense, multilateral and regional agreements appear to have played a key role not only through tariff reduction but remarkably thanks to the creation of a rule-based system governing global trade relations, through which uncertainty was reduced and the spread of best practices promoted. This result would confirm the thesis of those who endorse the existence of a formalized trading system to guarantee tariff liberalization and foster trade growth.

Every new U.S. administration brings renewed hope and vigor to the World regarding unrealized dreams and aspirations as well as unfinished and not realized agendas. The U.S. has not neglected Latin America, even according to some the region has probably benefited from U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

A New Partnership for the Americas is the name that the Obama group used during the election campaign. The common thread is a preference to develop cooperation through converging national interests as articulated by the U.S. and Latin American Caribbean governments.

The U.S. and Cuban government officials are talking for the first time in years raising hopes for a thaw in long-icy relations. President Obama has granted Cuban-Americans the right to travel freely to Cuba and to send remittances there, and to give U.S. telecommunications companies the right to pursue business there represents a first step in trying for better relations.

If the new Obama administration thought that a change in the rhetoric and tone would make the likes of Castro, Chavez and others see things the U.S. way, a new lesson was learned in that sometimes countries disagree simply because their goals are mutually exclusive.

A year after Barack Obama became U.S. president, pledging "a new beginning" in relations with Cuba and wining praise from Fidel Castro, bitter rhetoric is once more flying between the two states.

At the outset it has to be recognized that the U.S. government actually understands what is happening in Latin America. The U.S. policy is highly sophisticated and often seems more drastic on its understanding of what is happening than some or most of its critics.

Looking at some people's history of the hemisphere it is remarkable and transformative that for the first time in many years, the U.S. does not seem to care much what happens in Latin America. In an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another. Cultivating spheres of cooperation--not competing spheres of influence--will lead to progress in the Caribbean and Latin America. Engagement meaning expanded cooperation with and the need to broaden policy efforts with the group of leftists rules countries such as Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Peru and Venezuela beyond the previous administration focus on regional economic integration through competitive liberalization.

The purpose of this paper is to relate total factor productivity to the problem of economic growth in Latin America. Slow economic growth has been the most important problem in the modern history of the region. The paper extensively reviews the literature on the determinants of economic growth in Latin America and shows that the slow growth of total factor productivity (TFP) seems to be the primary problem. Further, this problem is linked to the quality of institutions in the region. Unfortunately, the concept of institutional quality is very difficult to define in a meaningful way. This affects public policy towards economic growth in the region. Finally, it is shown that the problem that has been identified may be crucial for Latin America but the region is hardly unique in this regard.

Drawing upon the historical use of Las Castas — paintings of racialized identity categories during the Spanish colonial era — we use this chapter to explore stories of discrimination and how it persists in Mexico. Borrowing from non-corporeal actant theory, we set out to explore differences and inequality formations of multiple identities. Inequity is symbolized through the names given to biracial and multiracial castes and overtly presented through the arrangement and numbering of categories in the paintings. We overlay contemporary understandings of oppression and opportunity found in the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP). New antenarratives of hierarchies appear along with the persistence of the old. In particular, the hierarchical positions of those whose ancestors are Spanish and Indigenous have improved over time, while those who identify as Indigenous remain disadvantaged. The stories that we surface suggest that racial differences co-existed in colonial-Mexico and remnants of the caste system may still haunt social life of citizens today. The research attempts to build on scholarship that identified ideas of discrimination as persistent actors in evolving networks. It also contributes to our understanding of how oppressive systems and discrimination are transmedial, persisting as stories embedded in, and reinforced by, complex understandings of interaction. One can plausibly conclude that oral narratives are transmediated both in the art of classic paintings and in response to questions of the LAPOP.

This chapter presents the results and a brief analysis of the results of a survey conducted by members of the Department of Production Engineering at São Paulo State University (UNESP). The survey analyzed the use and degree of satisfaction with computer resources in small companies in the Bauru region, São Paulo, Brazil. Sixty-eight organizations registered at the Center of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Bauru regional office) were surveyed by means of a questionnaire sent out by e-mail. The main focus of the study was in the production and supplies planning and control areas. Analysis of the data and business owner reports revealed the urgent need to develop low-cost computer programs, especially developed for management activities in small companies, providing increased competitive capacity.