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Begin New Search Topic Development Political Geography Latin America Content Type Working Paper

91. The Political Economy of Taxation and Tax Reform in Developing Countries

Author:
Jonathan Di John
Publication Date:
07-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Taxation provides one of the principal lenses in measuring state capacity, state formation and power relations in a society. This paper critically examines three main approaches (economic, administrative and political economy) to understanding taxation. It also examines differences in tax composition across middle-income developing regions and finds that Latin American economies tax upper income groups much less than in East Asia and Eastern Europe, and explores the political economy and policy implications of these differences. The paper also examines issues of tax reform in low income/post-war economies and explores the problem that capital flight poses for less developed countries.
Topic:
Development, International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, and Third World
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America

92. Why Have All Development Strategies Failed in Latin America?

Author:
Guillermo Rozenwurcel
Publication Date:
02-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
After the Great Depression and throughout the rest of the twentieth century, Latin American countries basically approached economic development following two successive and quite opposed strategies. The first one was import substitution industrialization. The second was the so-called Washington Consensus approach. While the two views were founded on quite opposite premises, neither the import substitution industrialization nor the Washington Consensus managed to deliver sustained economic development to Latin American countries. Two domestic elements are crucial to understand this outcome. One is the failure of the state. The second is the inability to achieve mature integration into the world economy.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Washington, South America, and Latin America

93. Living with Hugo: U.S. Policy Toward Hugo Chávez's Venezuela

Author:
Richard Lapper
Publication Date:
11-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The popularity of the new political and economic model being developed in Venezuela has been a consistent source of aggravation for the U.S. government. Since first winning the presidency in December 1998, Hugo Chávez has been able through repeated electoral victories and radical constitutional reform to dominate Venezuela's government and public institutions. Undaunted by stiff U.S. opposition, President Chávez has launched what he calls a Bolivarian revolution, named after Simón Bolívar, a nineteenth-century leader of Latin America's independence wars. Chávez has reasserted the role of the state in the Venezuelan economy and developed extensive social programs to advance an anti- U.S., anti-capitalist crusade. New or newly reinvigorated alliances with established U.S. adversaries have helped internationalize Chávez's aims. Most alarming to those concerned with the health of Venezuelan democracy, Chávez and his allies have concentrated political power in the hands of the executive, curtailed the independence of the judiciary, shown limited tolerance for domestic critics, and openly intervened in the electoral politics of neighboring states.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Foreign Policy, Development, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, South America, and Latin America

94. What Role for Learning? The Diffusion of Privatisation in the OECD and Latin American Countries

Author:
Covadonga Meseguer
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
In this paper, I enquire whether 37 governments in industrial and in Latin American countries privatised as a result of learning from experience. Using a rational updating model, I examine whether the decision in the 1980s and 1990s to streamline the public sector was the outcome of a revision of beliefs about the effectiveness of privatisation or whether, alternatively, it was triggered by international pressures or mimicry. The results suggest that rational learning and especially emulation were two important factors in the decision to privatise. International pressures, here proxied by the presence or absence of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and by European Union membership, are irrelevant to explanations of the decision to privatise. Finally, domestic political conditions appear relevant to the decision to launch privatisation but only when the analysis is carried out for each of the regional sub-samples. In the OECD countries, centre-left governments were more likely to privatise whereas in Latin American more repressive regimes were more willing to divest.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
Latin America

95. The Poverty Macroeconomic Policy Nexus: Some Short-run Analytics

Author:
George Mavrotas and S. Mansoob Murshed
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The present paper utilises a short-run theoretical macroeconomic model of a small open economy to look at the impact of macroeconomic policies and financial deepening upon poverty through sectoral changes. This is because an expansion in certain sectors may cause greater poverty reduction. The model involves a non-traded and a traded sector on the formal side of the economy. The former is more capital intensive and the latter more unskilled labour intensive. Increased employment in the traded sector is more pro-poor compared to a similar rise in the non-traded sector as the former draws workers out of poverty in the informal sector. The model in our paper analyses short-run effects of devaluation, a rise in the money supply induced by financial deepening, and taxation to discourage non-traded goods consumption. Financial deepening can induce greater output and reduce poverty. Other results are mixed and taxonomic. We also attempt to differentiate between the stylised experiences of East Asia and Latin America. East Asian economies have relied more heavily on labour-intensive manufactured exports, whereas Latin America has had a relatively greater share of capital intensive and natural resource based exports. In recent decades countries in these two regions have had differing experiences in poverty reduction, with poverty arguably declining more in East Asia.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
East Asia and Latin America

96. What Iraq and Argentina Might Learn from Each Other

Author:
Anna Gelpern
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Financial collapse usually triggers a flurry of market, academic, and policy innovation. The Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s produced the Brady Bonds and led to the rise of today's emerging markets. In the late 1990s, crises in Pakistan, Ecuador, and Ukraine helped teach the markets how to restructure international sovereign bonds. Crises in Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, and throughout East Asia raised doubts about the international system's ability to manage vast and rapid capital flows, and prompted a big-picture reassessment under the rubric “international financial architecture.” This included most famously the sovereign bankruptcy proposals discussed elsewhere in this volume.
Topic:
Development and Economics
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Middle East, East Asia, Brazil, South America, Latin America, and Mexico

97. What Makes a Difference in Achieving Higher Labor Productivity? The Case of Low-Income Countries in Latin America

Author:
Osvaldo Nina
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:
This paper uses firm level surveys from Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to estimate the determinants of labor productivity. This study started out with the hypothesis that the adverse external business conditions that firms in poor Latin American countries face, may be an important explication of the generally low levels of productivity. However, the empirical results, based on the survey of more than 1300 businesses, do not confirm this hypothesis. Compared to all the variables that are under the firms control, such as capital intensity, energy use, and worker skills, the external business environment (macroeconomic instability and labor regulations) has very little impact on productivity.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Labor Issues, Productivity, and Income
Political Geography:
Latin America, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Ecuador

98. Do Structural Reforms always Succeed? Lessons from Brazil

Author:
Jorge Saba Arbache
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
In the last twenty years, Brazil has undergone several attempts of improving sustainable growth through stabilization programmes, and more recently, structural reforms in line with the Washington Consensus Agenda. The results, however, have been disappointing, as the per capita output growth has remained below its historic trend, and poverty and inequality remain at high levels. This paper investigates why marketoriented reforms such as trade and capital account liberalization, privatization, deregulation and stabilization failed to boost growth in Brazil. We conclude that structural reforms may contribute to growth if accompanied by microeconomic policies tailor-made to address the country's needs, and by appropriate macroeconomic, institutional and political environments.
Topic:
Development, Human Welfare, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Washington, Brazil, and Latin America

99. Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the Region

Author:
Daniel W. Christman, John G. Heimann, and Julia E. Sweig
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The democracies of the Andean region—Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia—are at risk. The problems that characterize other developing regions—including political instability, economic stagnancy, widening inequality, and social divisions along class, color, ethnic, ideological, and urban-rural fault lines—are all present in the Andes. Most important is the region's physical insecurity, due in some countries to ongoing or resurgent violent conflict, and in every country to the lack of state control over significant territory and to porous borders that enable the easy movement of drugs, arms, and conflict. Equally sobering, expectations for strong democracy and economic prosperity in the Andes remain unrealized. Recognizing its interests in the Andes, the United States over the past two decades has spent billions of dollars and significant manpower to stem the flow of illegal drugs from the region northward; to assist local security forces in the fight against drugs, terror, and insurgency; and to promote free markets, human rights, and democratic consolidation. Yet the region remains on the brink of collapse, an outcome that would pose a serious threat to the U.S. goal of achieving democracy, prosperity, and security in the hemisphere.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States, Colombia, South America, Latin America, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia

100. Survey of SSR Regional and Sub-Regional Networks

Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform
Abstract:
The enclosed survey was conducted in order to map all regional and sub regional networks working in the field of Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. The objective of mapping SSR networks in these regions is multi-fold. Firstly it is imperative that at a time when security has taken a truly global dimension and span, academics and practitioners alike are aware of the state of SSR in different regions. Certain similarities and patterns emerge during the analysis that offer lessons and directions for actors wishing to become involved in SSR in a particular region, or searching for guidance in applying best practices and lessons learned to particular situations. Secondly, exchange of experience and ideas is especially important in supporting South-South dialogue, but the value of cooperation cannot be overemphasized given the often-unclear context in which SSR activities take place. The mapping exercise serves as an entry-point for practitioners to identify existing networks and their areas of expertise. Opportunities for collaboration are made possible by identifying other organisations that are pursuing similar goals. Additionally, the map of SSR networks serves to identify possible gaps in scope of activity and highlights entry points for other organisations and networks to further the objectives of security sector management and reform. Lastly, this exercise will serve as a vehicle for the GFN-SSR to develop ways to strengthen its activities. One way in which the GFN-SSR is already adding value is through the development of its website, which, inter alia, offers a newsletter in four languages, i.e., English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. An activity to reinforce the access to information for those in areas of poor connectivity is already being developed through the conception of a CD-ROM containing all the existing website information for distribution on a timely basis to interested organisations.
Topic:
Security, Development, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Africa, America, Europe, Asia, South America, Latin America, Central America, and Caribbean