Global Integration and Growth in Honduras and Nicaragua

Globalization, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sustainable growth

The Emergence of New Successful Export Activities in Latin America: The Case of Chile

This paper surveys overall export growth in Chile and focuses on three case studies of the emergence of successful export activities in Chile: wine, pork and blueberries. Each case study discusses how companies, associations, and governments at various levels have addressed market failures and facilitated the provision of public goods necessary for each activity. The case studies additionally profile first movers in each activity and describe the positive externalities they provide to imitators, particularly diffusion of export knowledge. Also included are counterfactual cases of a less successful firm or activity (an unsuccessful wine exporter, other types of berries, and commodity pork production rather than custom cuts, respectively) and a discussion of policy implications.Exports, Agriculture, Chile

Industrial Policy in Chile

This paper studies three horizontal policy instruments and two vertical ones in Chilean industrial policy, particularly regarding small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The horizontal instruments are (1) a guarantee program for borrowing by SMEs (FOGAPE), (2) a small subsidy to new exports that was applied from 1985 through 2003, and (3) the innovation subsidies provided by the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción (CORFO). The vertical policy instruments are the activities of Fundación Chile (FCh), a semi-public entrepreneur cum venture capitalist, and a CORFO program to attract foreign direct investment in information technology. Although most programs are well designed, they are numerous and insufficiently funded; Chile could benefit from a prioritization of needs and consolidation of these programs. Moreover, the instruments for making strategic bets on new sectors are particularly weak. In particular, FCh needs to refocus its activities on high-risk projects with long payoffs, something it cannot do with its small endowment.Industrial policy, Small and medium enterprises, Chile

Corporate Governance in Chile

The purpose of this paper is to describe the main features of the Chilean corporate governance regime during the ‘90s and to evaluate how well it runs. According to the existing literature, Chile’s system can best be described as an “insider” one. Large groups organized in a pyramidal fashion typically control publicly traded companies. In spite of this, corporate governance discriminates moderately against small shareholders or outsiders (e.g. bondholders). Some of the reasons behind this are the monitoring role of some financial institutions, such as AFPs (pension fund managers), the insurance and banking regulation, and an active supervisory agency. However, since the onset of the 1997-98 world financial crisis, Chilean capital markets have been gloomy. Capital outflows from the region have not been the only cause, but also a number of large takeovers of domestic corporations by multinationals and some well publicized cases of rent extraction from minority parties are to blame. In an attempt to revive a flagging market, some vices in corporate practices have been corrected (partially) by the enacting of the so-called “Ley de OPA” (PTO law) in December 2000. This law is aimed at protecting of minority shareholders’ rights. The Chilean experience illustrates the importance of factors not usually considered in discussions on corporate governance for developing countries, such as regulated institutional investors and banking sector legislation.

Accurate and unambiguous tag-to-gene mapping in serial analysis of gene expression

BACKGROUND: In this study, we present a robust and reliable computational method for tag-to-gene assignment in serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE). The method relies on current genome information and annotation, incorporation of several new features, and key improvements over alternative methods, all of which are important to determine gene expression levels more accurately. The method provides a complete annotation of potential virtual SAGE tags within a genome, along with an estimation of their confidence for experimental observation that ranks tags that present multiple matches in the genome. RESULTS: We applied this method to the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome, producing the most thorough and accurate annotation of potential virtual SAGE tags that is available today for this organism. The usefulness of this method is exemplified by the significant reduction of ambiguous cases in existing experimental SAGE data. In addition, we report new insights from the analysis of existing SAGE data. First, we found that experimental SAGE tags mapping onto introns, intron-exon boundaries, and non-coding RNA elements are observed in all available SAGE data. Second, a significant fraction of experimental SAGE tags was found to map onto genomic regions currently annotated as intergenic. Third, a significant number of existing experimental SAGE tags for yeast has been derived from truncated cDNAs, which are synthesized through oligo-d(T) priming to internal poly-(A) regions during reverse transcription. CONCLUSION: We conclude that an accurate and unambiguous tag mapping process is essential to increase the quality and the amount of information that can be extracted from SAGE experiments. This is supported by the results obtained here and also by the large impact that the erroneous interpretation of these data could have on downstream applications

Análisis sobre el aumento del ahorro en Chile

Desde mediados de los ochenta, cuando la economía se encontraba sumida en la crisis de la deuda, el ahorro y la inversión en Chile aumentaron dramáticamente. El ahorro lo ha hecho aún más que la inversión, revirtiendo el fuerte uso de recursos externos para financiar los niveles desmedrados de inversión de la primera mitad de la década pasada. Estas características del proceso de ahorro e inversión contrastan con lo acaecido en otros países de la región, donde la tasa de inversión se ha mantenido estancada y la tasa de ahorro nacional ha caído (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 1996). Algunos de estos países -particularmente Argentina y México- iniciaron hace varios años programas de estabilización y cambio estructural orientados a darle al mercado una mayor importancia en la asignación de recursos con el objetivo de dinamizar la inversión y la tasa de crecimiento. Muchas de estas políticas habían sido puestas en práctica en Chile a partir de mediados de los setenta. Además, tanto Chile como otros países de la región han recibido cuantiosos flujos de capital durante los años noventa, relajando significativamente la restricción externa a la inversión (Calvo, Leiderman y Reinhardt, 1993; Ffrench-Davis y Griffith-Jones, 1995). Sin embargo, sólo en Chile se ha dado un aumento importante en las tasas de ahorro e inversión.