Las medidas de movilidad como explicación de los resultados económicos a corto plazo durante la primera ola de la COVID-19

People’s mobility behavior and self-correcting economic forces are shown to be key variables in explaining the observed contraction and recovery of the Bolivian economy during Covid’s first wave. ARMAX models are used to explain the growth rate of the monthly index of economic activity in terms of changes in the rate of mobility measures produced by Google, which are argued to capture the complex interactive dynamics of Covid epidemiology, Covid policy and people’s own decisions to minimize health risks, however generating a trade-off with inevitable economic sacrifice, thus affecting aggregate economic activity.El comportamiento de la movilidad de las personas y las fuerzas económicas autocorrectivas demuestran ser variables claves a la hora de explicar la contracción y recuperación observadas en la economía boliviana durante la primera ola de la COVID-19. Se usaron modelos ARMAX para explicar la tasa de crecimiento del índice mensual de actividad económica en términos de los cambios en la tasa de medidas de movilidad generadas por Google, las cuales pretenden capturar el efecto de las dinámicas complejas de la epidemiología y las políticas de la COVID-19 en las decisiones de las personas al sopesar los riesgos para la salud con el inevitable sacrificio económico, afectando así a la actividad económica agregada

Capitalization, Regulation and the Poor: Access to Basic Services in Bolivia

Privatization, Regulation, Utilities, Poverty

Capitalization and Privatization in Bolivia: An Aproximation to an Evaluation

The paper describes the privatization process in Bolivia, placing emphasis on the particularities of the capitalization mechanism that was used for this purpose, and the regulatory framework introduced as its essential complement. With this background, the paper then details the changes in the industrial organization and ownership patterns in the electricity, oil and gas, telecommunications, transportation, and water industries. The discussion then turns to these processes’ economic and social consequences. In the first case, the key issues are which agents benefited from the transfer of assets, and the effects on firm-level variables like investment, profitability, and transfers to the State. With regards to social outcomes, we focus on the effects on employees and consumers. For the first, interest centers on what happened to employment and wages in the sectors affected; for the second, what occurred to access and prices for privatized utilities, and to welfare more generally. This paper touches on all these issues, although in several cases a full treatment is not possible due to data limitations.Privatization; Regulation; Economic Impact

Statistical Properties and Problems in Modeling the Bolivian Foreign Exchange Market

The Bolivian foreign exchange market is explained in terms of the official and parallel exchange rates. The data covers the post hyper inflationary period from 1986 to 1992. The distribution of the rate of depreciation of the official and parallel exchange rates is long tailed and strongly departs from normality due to the existence of outliers. A market interactions model of the autoregressive kind is estimated using robust regression. This procedure produces M-parameter estimates using iteratively reweighted least squares. The robust method handles well the outlier problem and at the same time it reveals the true nature of the statistical properties of the data by not being able to produce white noise in the squared residuals. Both markets show a one-time break in the variance creating two periods of differential behavior, with one of them having GARCH properties. Robust unit root and cointegration tests also fail to produce white noise squared residuals due to the same phenomena. Further research requires the development of a robust procedure that could take care of the outlier and heteroskedasticity problems simultaneously

Bolivian capitalization and privatization: Approximation to an evaluation

The wave of privatizations Latin America experienced during the 1990s was integral to stabilization programs and a general reordering of states’ roles in the regional economy. Over the past few years, however, these privatizations have come under increasing fire. Their purported adverse effects range from higher utility prices to aggravating—or even causing—the current regional recession. In short, privatization shares in the criticism directed at the entire liberalization process. Within this context, accurate knowledge of privatization’s real consequences can be of considerable value. While research has been conducted on certain economic effects, less is known about privatization’s broader social consequences. This chapter attempts to fill some of those gaps as they concern Bolivia.Privatization; Industrial Organization and Regulation; Firm Performance; Consumer Welfare; Political Economy

Bolivia: Impact of shocks and poverty policy on household welfare

This paper evaluates the short term impacts on poverty of pro-poor expenditure and total social expenditure during the 1999-2002 period of Bolivian economic recession. Observed characteristics of recession are simulated by the combined effects of negative terms of trade shock, reduction in foreign saving flows and low output growth. Evaluation is performed by simulating the impacts of shocks and social expenditures in an environment of low growth: i) on macro aggregates of consumption, income, saving and prices (based on a simple static 1-2-3 model built with 1998 data as the base year), ii) on household income and consumption levels by quintiles and areas, and iii) on consumption based poverty indicators by areas. The following were main results from experiments: The terms of trade shock had greater negative impact on household income then reduction in foreign saving flows. In contrast, reduction in foreign saving flows had greater negative impact on household consumption then the terms of trade shock. Poverty measured by the head count ratio has been greater from reduction in foreign saving flows then from the terms of trade shock. Poverty measured by the poverty gap and poverty intensity has concentrated in rural areas, being greater from reduction in foreign saving flows then from the terms of trade shock. Under macroeconomic stability (no shocks and 1998 macro conditions) social expenditure policy for poverty reduction would have had an important positive impact on household income and consumption levels (more so in income then consumption), in reducing the number of poor (more in urban then rural areas), and in reducing poverty gap and poverty intensity (more so in rural areas). However, social expenditure policy does not promote the production of tradables. The combined positive effects from observed social expenditure policy and effort in an environment of low output growth, did not compensate the combined negative impacts from the experienced terms of trade shock and reduction in foreign saving flows. These conclusions show that under macroeconomic disequilibrium poverty reduction efforts become policies of poverty containment or safety net programs. Poverty reduction is a long term objective that requires long term commitment for an environment on macroeconomic stability.External Shocks; Poverty; CGEM 1-2-3; HEGY

Las reformas estructurales bolivianas y su impacto sobre inversiones

The document is an analytical report on the initial results of the impact of structural reforms on investment for the period 1980-97 in general and the more recent structural reforms in the infrastructure industries in particular. In the context of these reforms it explores the connection between investment and growth, with foreign direct investment as an important component

The concept of information poverty and how to measure it in the Latin American context

The construction of the information society must be complemented with pro-poor vision and policies. For this reason, this paper defines the concept of information and communication poverty, introduces the criteria of poverty line location for its identification, and suggests computation for the economic cost of reaching such a line for its aggregate measurement. In this process, the structural and technological restrictions faced by a society are acknowledged, and the way they affect and are affected by the concept of information and communication poverty is discussed. This research study examines these issues conceptually, in order to contribute to the study regarding magnitude, depth and characteristics of information and communication poverty, as well as to identify some of its implications for drafting public policies

Inversión y productividad en la industria boliviana de la electricidad

The document is an analytical report on the impact of structural reforms in the Bolivian electricity industry initiated in 1994-95. With the Capitalization Law, the Regulatory System Law and the Electricity Law in particular, the electricity industry experimented a new structure including an administered wholesale electricity market and a regulated retail market in distribution

The Elasticity of Substitution in Demand for Non-Tradable Goods in Bolivia

This paper uses a CES function to estimate the constant elasticity of substitution in consumption for non-tradables relative to tradables in a dependent economy framework. The methodology for generating data on real consumption of tradable and non-tradable goods, real prices of tradable and non-tradable goods and real absorption is based on the Bolivian Input-Output Matrix, producing quarterly data for the period 1990. 1 to 2002. 4. The data identify Bolivia as a country highly open to trade, with an average ratio of 55 percent in the value of exports and imports relative to GDP, non-tradable production accounting for 52 percent of GDP, and differences in the behavior of the internal and external real exchange rates. The HEGY test is used to identify and separate out seasonal unit roots in the data. A cointegration relationship was found between real absorption, the non-tradable to tradable consumption ratio and the non-tradable to tradable price ratio, suggesting inelasticity of substitution.