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41. Schooling Inequality, Crises, and Financial Liberalization in Latin America

Author:
Nancy Birdsall, Gunilla Pettersson, and Jere R. Behrman
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Latin America is characterized by high and persistent schooling, land, and income inequalities and extreme income concentration. In a highly unequal setting, powerful interests are more likely to dominate politics, pushing for policies that protect privileges rather than foster competition and growth. As a result, changes in policies that political elites resist may be postponed in high-inequality countries to the detriment of overall economic performance.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Globalization, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Latin America

42. Reforming and Reinforcing the Revolution: The Post-TRIPS Politics of Patents in Latin America

Author:
Kenneth Shadlen
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
National policies toward intellectual property (IP) were revolutionized in the 1990s, as countries adopted new systems to conform to the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). TRIPS-style IP regimes make patents available for more types of knowledge, grant long periods of patent protection, and endow patent owners with strong rights of exclusion. This paper analyzes two contrasting patterns of political mobilization and pressures for change that newly-introduced, TRIPS-style regimes became subject to by the early 21st Century. Most governments faced pressures to address aspects of their IP systems regarding pharmaceutical patents; governments came under pressure to reform their new patent systems, calling into question the appropriateness and utility of broad and strong private rights of exclusion as tools for disseminating knowledge. Most governments also faced pressures to modify aspects of their patent systems more broadly related to science, technology, and indigenous innovation (STI); governments came under pressure to reinforce their new patent systems, buttressing the role of private rights of exclusion as mechanisms to incentivize the creation and distribution of knowledge and technology. I provide a political explanation for the contrasting trajectories of reform and reinforcement by examining how different policy arrangements generate and mobilize interests for continuity and discontinuity. The focus is on asymmetric patterns of interest mobilization: those actors who benefit from policy interventions tend to mobilize more than those who suffer; those actors who suffer retain the capacities for mobilization and resistance more in the area of health-drugs than STI.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, and Intellectual Property/Copyright
Political Geography:
Latin America

43. Bolivia: Rescuing the New Constitution and Democratic Stability -- Latin America Briefing N°18

Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
President Evo Morales's efforts to consolidate sweeping reforms on the basis of a controversial new constitution have steered Bolivia into a cul-de-sac. On 8 December 2007, his supporters in the Constituent Assembly (CA) provisionally passed the text by running roughshod over procedures and virtually excluding opposition delegates. Weak attempts to bridge the deepening divide have failed, increasing potential for a violent confrontation both sides still seem to wish to avoid. Openly defying Morales in May 2008, however, Santa Cruz massively approved the department's autonomy statutes by referendum. Two other eastern lowland departments followed suit, with the fourth expected to do so on 22 June. Morales is pushing for final adoption of the constitution by referendum and a popular vote of confidence. The Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union (EU) and several European countries, and the Group of Friends (Argentina, Brazil and Colombia) should provide good offices to help the government and opposition reach urgent agreement on a revised constitution that can keep the country together.
Topic:
Government, Political Economy, and Politics
Political Geography:
Latin America

44. Control y sanción: El financiamiento público a las Agrupaciones Políticas Nacionales en México (2000-2005)

Author:
Anselmo Flores Andrade
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
CONfines de Relaciones Internacionales y Ciencia Política
Abstract:
Democracia y transparencia son una demanda cada vez más presente en nuestros sistemas políticos contemporáneos (Peschard, 2005; Rivera, 2005). Si bien el adjetivo democrático ha sido utilizado para legitimar el origen, actuación y acciones tanto de los funcionarios como de los órganos públicos, esto ya no es razón suficiente. Cada vez es más imperativo informar, justificar y transparentar la toma de decisiones; así mismo, las acciones emprendidas (Shedler, 2004); es decir, ejercer la rendición de cuentas. Esta tarea, es cada vez más necesaria en la relación dinero y política, pues dicha relación, en los últimas décadas, ha generando graves casos de corrupción que han influido en el descrédito de la política, en general, y de los partidos políticos, en particular. De hecho, los efectos negativos de esa relación han colocado el tema como uno de los centrales en la agenda política latinoamericana (Carrillo, Lujambio, Navarro y Zovatto, 2003; García, 2000; Griner y Zovatto, 2004). Especialmente, el financiamiento de los partidos políticos ha sido motivo de preocupación por lo que, en la última década, se introdujeron, en la mayoría de los códigos electorales del continente, normas y mecanismos tendientes a controlar e inhibir las acciones prohibidas por la ley (Zovatto, 2003). A pesar de ello, los escándalos políticos por el uso ilícito de dinero y tráfico de influencias en las campañas electorales continuaron.
Topic:
Democratization, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Latin America

45. The Provision of Banking Services in Latin America: Obstacles and Recommendations

Author:
Liliana Rojas-Suarez
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The depth of and access to financial services provided by banks throughout Latin America are extremely low in spite of its recognized importance for economic activity, employment and poverty alleviation. Low financial depth and access hurts the poor the most and is due to a variety of obstacles that are presented in this paper in four categories, along with recommendations to overcome them. The first category groups socio-economic obstacles that undercut the demand for financial services of large segments of the population. The second category identifies problems in the operations of the banking sector that impedes the adequate provision of financial services to households and firms. The third category captures institutional deficiencies, with emphasis on the quality of the legal framework and the governability of the countries in the region. The fourth category identifies regulations that tend to distort the provision of banking services. Recommendations to confront these obstacles include innovative proposals that take into consideration the political constraints facing individual countries. Some of the policy recommendations include: public-private partnerships to improve financial literacy, the creation of juries specialized in commercial activities to support the rights of borrowers and creditors, and the approval of regulation to allow widespread usage of technological innovations to permit low-income families and small firms to gain access to financial services.
Topic:
Political Economy and Third World
Political Geography:
Latin America

46. Intergenerational Influences of Wealth in Mexico

Author:
Seymour Spilerman and Florencia Torche
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
Using the 2006 Mexican Social Mobility Survey, this research evaluates the influence of parental wealth on several outcomes of adult children, including educational attainment, consumption level, asset holdings, home ownership, and value of residence. Two mechanisms of parental influence on economic wellbeing are explored: an indirect effect mediated by parental investment in human capital, and the direct transfer of resources. Three main findings emerge from the analysis. First, parental wealth is a strong determinant of educational attainment, net of the standard indicators of advantage regularly used in stratification research, and the influence of wealth is stronger among the most disadvantaged children (those with low cultural capital, and residing in non-urban areas). Second, the mechanism of parental influence on adult children's economic wellbeing differs depending on the outcome: In the case of consumption level, the influence is largely indirect, mediated by parental investment in offspring's human capital, while the opposite is true for children's asset holdings, where a direct transfer of resources predominates. Third, while access to homeownership is only weakly stratified by parent's and children's resources, the value of the acquired home is significantly affected by parental wealth. These patterns of influence are similar to those found in Chile (Spilerman and Torche 2004, Torche and Spilerman 2006) and they highlight the critical impact of parental wealth in less developed countries.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, Political Economy, Poverty, and Third World
Political Geography:
Latin America, Mexico, and United Arab Emirates

47. Privatization--A Summary Assessment

Author:
John Nellis
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
In the last 25 years many thousands of formerly state-owned and operated firms have been privatized in developing and transition countries, generating over $400 billion (US) in sales proceeds. In addition, thousands of firms have been transferred by privatization processes in which no money was raised (though a surprising number of state-owned firms remain in these regions). The vast majority of economic studies praise privatization's positive impact at the level of the firm, as well as its positive macroeconomic and welfare contributions. Moreover, contrary to popular conception, privatization has not contributed to maldistribution of income or increased poverty——at least in the best-studied Latin American cases. In sum, the technical picture is generally positive. Nonetheless, public opinion in the less developed world is generally suspicious of, and often hostile to, privatization. A good part of the problem is that privatization has proven harder to launch, and is more likely to produce errant results, in low-income, institutionally weak states, particularly in the most important infrastructure sectors. Privatization is hard to sell politically; it has become a lightning rod and handy scapegoat for all discontent related to liberalization and globalization. What is needed are reform mechanisms that give incentives and comfort to reputable private investors, that create and sustain the policy and regulatory institutions that make governments competent and honest partners with the private operators, while at the same time protecting consumers, particularly the most disadvantaged, from abuse.</p
Topic:
Development, Economics, Political Economy, and Privatization
Political Geography:
Latin America

48. 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

49. The Bargain of the Unstable: Trade Negotiations and Financial Crises in Mercosur 1995-2001

Author:
Pablo Heidrich
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Argentina and Brazil suffered grave financial crises during the 1990s. During that time, they were involved in trade negotiations with each other inside Mercosur. As the financial crises struck one or the other country, their negotiating positions varied from accommodating to aggressive, leading to peaks of confrontation from which Mercosur has not quite recovered yet. Furthermore, those crises provoked a large number of trade disputes as protectionism from both countries grew when the crises increasingly hurt their economies.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, and Latin America

50. Openness, R&D, and Growth: Difference in Latin American and East Asian Policy and Political Economy

Author:
Glauco A. S. Oliveira
Publication Date:
05-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA)
Institution:
School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
Abstract:
This paper reviews recent theoretical and empirical literature relating openness, research and development (R&D) policies, and growth in developing countries. Although there are indications that openness is associated with improvements in productivity due to technological spillovers, active R&D policies and complementary institutions (intellectual property rights) play an important role in bringing about such gains. The article compares East Asia and Latin America, with special attention to the latter. The puzzle is that both regions opened their economies and carried out a set of similar industrial and technological strategies, yet their experiences in growth and R&D performance are divergent. After considering differences in each region’s pace of integration into the world economy, the analysis moves to a closer look at the political economy of policy formation in Latin America and East Asia. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section introduces the debate; the second encompasses a comprehensive theoretical and empirical literature review; the third discusses the policy and political economy experiences of the regions. Finally, the conclusion offers policy recommendations for Latin America, based on the success of the East Asian experience.
Topic:
Political Economy, Economic Growth, and Research and Development
Political Geography:
East Asia and Latin America

51. Development and Foreign Investments: Lessons Learned from Mexican Banking

Author:
Jacob Steinfeld
Publication Date:
07-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT (FDI) HAS TRANSFORMED MEXICO'S BANKING SYSTEM during the past decade, making it the second largest in Latin America with $165 billion in commercial assets in 2003. In the past four years, Mexico received $25.3 billion of FDI into its financial sector. This composes nearly 40 percent of total FDI inflows into the country. As a result of FDI flowing into the country's financial sector, the Mexican banking system has the highest ratio of foreign ownership in Latin America.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Latin America and Mexico

52. The Political-Economic Conundrum: The Affinity of Economic and Political Reform in the Middle East and North Africa

Author:
Eva Bellin
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
FOR NEARLY TWO DECADES THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (MENA) has languished in economic stagnation and lassitude. At a time when the logic of market-driven reform and exportoriented growth has become nearly canonical worldwide, the MENA region has proven steadfastly unenthusiastic about reform, shutting itself out of the benefits of economic globalization and falling behind most other regions in economic development. At the same time, the MENA region has distinguished itself by spurning another worldwide trend: democratization. As democracy has spread in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East has remained largely authoritarian, experiencing at most only mild liberalizing political reforms. This dual resistance to world trends is intriguing and resurrects the question of the relationship between political and economic reform. Is this dual resistance to reform coincidental? And what does this resistance say about whether and how Western policy makers and aid practitioners should try to link or sequence their efforts to promote political and economic reform in the region?
Topic:
Globalization and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and North Africa

53. The Dominican Republic: Resolving the Banking Crisis and Restoring Growth

Author:
Steve H. Hanke
Publication Date:
07-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
After a decade of rapid economic growth, the Dominican Republic entered a downward spiral in 2003. The economy shrank for the first time since 1990, the inflation rate quadrupled, the Dominican peso collapsed, government debt more than doubled, interest rates soared, and the central bank incurred large losses.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Latin America and Caribbean

54. 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

55. Political Finance Regulation in Guatemala: A Comparative Survey

Author:
Kevin Casas-Zamora
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
As in most Latin American countries, the funding of political activities has only recently become a matter of serious concern in Guatemala. Long known for its chronic political instability, the country has limited experience in the observance of basic democratic practices such as regular and reasonably free and fair elections. Even today, the regulation of political finance remains under the shadow of other pressing and as yet unresolved political issues such as the extraordinary weakness of parties, the consistently high abstention rates and the practical disenfranchisement of the indigenous majority.
Topic:
International Relations, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Guatemala

56. Whither Europe?

Author:
Barry Eichengreen
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
Where I live, on the West Coast of the United States, and teach, at the University of California, Europe seems far away. Geographically we are closer to Latin America and Asia. Ethnically, Californians of Hispanic and Asian-American descent are increasingly numerous. Within 20 years, residents of European origin will be a minority; already they are a minority of the undergraduates enrolling at Berkeley. Economically as well, we look to Asia. It is in California where the largest number of container ships arriving from Asia are unloaded, and it is across the Pacific, and in China in particular, that most of those containers originate.
Topic:
Economics and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, China, Europe, Asia, California, and Latin America

57. Earnings Insurance for Germany

Author:
Gary Burtless and Holger Schaefer
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
For more than a decade, Germany has suffered high rates of unemployment and very slow employment growth. Workers who have lost their jobs face unusually long spells of unemployment, in part because the adverse incentives of the German unemployment compensation system provide strong impetus for unemployed workers to remain jobless.
Topic:
Government and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and Latin America

58. Fixing Argentina

Author:
Kurt Schuler
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Argentina's currency crisis and economic depression have been caused by the bad policies of its government—not by banks, speculators, the International Monetary Fund (despite the bad advice it has given), or other scapegoats. The De la Rúa and Duhalde governments have made several gigantic blunders, namely, increasing tax rates, freezing bank deposits, devaluing the peso, and forcibly converting dollar bank deposits and contracts into pesos (“pesofication”).
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, and Latin America

59. Lessons of the Euro for the Rest of the World

Author:
Barry Eichengreen
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
Europe's single currency is widely invoked as a potential solution to the monetary and exchange rate problems of other regions, including Asia, Latin America, North America and even Africa. This lecture asks whether the Europe's experience in creating the euro is exportable. It argues that the single currency is the result of a larger integrationist project that has political as well as economic dimensions. The appetite for political integration being less in other parts of the world, the euro will not be easily emulated. Other regions will have to find different means of addressing the tension between domestic monetary autonomy and regional integration. Harmonized inflation targeting may be the best available solution.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America

60. The Labor Movement in Democratic Chile, 1990-2000

Author:
Frank K. Volker
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This article examines the experience of the Chilean labor movement during the first decade of democracy. In so doing, it calls attention to the need for further study of how institutional variables, such as labor legislations, influence labor movement strategies across different political regimes (authoritarian and democratic). Evidence from the Chilean case demonstrates that while important, exogenous variables such as new democratic governments and new labor legislations have only limited explanatory power with regard to labor movement strategies. This warrants a closer look at internal organizational aspects.
Topic:
Globalization, Industrial Policy, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Chile