Does Latin America lag behind due to shaper recessions and/or slower recoveries?

Since the 1950’s Latin America and the Caribbean have lost relative income share on a consistent basis in relation to the World and the developed countries on average. This paper presents a regional comparative statistical and econometric analysis for 1950-2007 for seven regions in the world, showing that for Latin America and the Caribbean convergence results mainly from weak expansions. Contractions have, as expected, a negative effect on the performance of Latin America and the Caribbean in historical perspective. At the same time in comparison to other regions, Latin America and the Caribbean recover quickly. Contrarily during expansions Latin America and the Caribbean tend to perform below the World and developing World regional average. Latin America and the Caribbean countries are, from a regional comparative perspective, ‘good’ at withstanding the negative effects of contractions and ‘bad’ at taking advantage of expansions to achieve convergence with the developed world. The paper argues that instead of viewing expansions through the lens of ‘crisis management,’ expansions should be seen and understood as an opportunity to grow and expand and promote greater levels of well-being, employment and equity in the region.Convergence, expansions, contractions, Latin America and the Caribbean

Growth and convergence/divergence in productivity under balance-of-payments constraint

This paper presents a model of convergence/divergence in productivity for two economies of different size and development building on Kaldor’s cumulative causation and the technological gap approaches to growth. Both operate within the logic provided by a balance-of-payments constraint framework. The more developed and larger economy, the leader, is technologically more advanced with higher levels of productivity and issues the international reserve currency. The developing economy, the follower, is closely linked to the leader economy and is balance-of-payments-constrained (BPC). The paper argues that the growth of the leader has at the same time divergent and convergent effects on the productivity gap between both economies. The divergent effect (the Kaldor effect) works through a process of induced productivity and cumulative causation. The convergent effect (Thirlwall’s Law) works through the BPC constraint. The model states that growth with convergence in productivity requires that the ratio of export to import income elasticities of the follower economy exceeds the ratio of the induced productivity of the leader economy to that of the follower economy. The paper then highlights the difficulty of achieving convergence under a BPC constraint and provides policy implications.Kaldor effect; Thirlwall effect; convergence/divergence; balance-of-payments constraint

"The Euro Imbalances and Financial Deregulation: A Post-Keynesian Interpretation of the European Debt Crisis"

Conventional wisdom suggests that the European debt crisis, which has thus far led to severe adjustment programs crafted by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in both Greece and Ireland, was caused by fiscal profligacy on the part of peripheral, or noncore, countries in combination with a welfare state model, and that the role of the common currency-the euro-was at best minimal. This paper aims to show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the crisis in Europe is the result of an imbalance between core and noncore countries that is inherent in the euro economic model. Underpinned by a process of monetary unification and financial deregulation, core eurozone countries pursued export-led growth policies-or, more specifically, "beggar thy neighbor" policies-at the expense of mounting disequilibria and debt accumulation in the periphery. This imbalance became unsustainable, and this unsustainability was a causal factor in the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The paper also maintains that the eurozone could avoid cumulative imbalances by adopting John Maynard Keynes's notion of the generalized banking principle (a fundamental principle of his clearing union proposal) as a central element of its monetary integration arrangement.European Union; Current Account Adjustment; Financial Aspects of Economic Integration

The Latin American experience in pension system reform: Coverage, fiscal issues and possible implications for China

In the past two decades, Latin American countries reformed their pension systems focusing mainly on addressing the weaknesses of the contributory schemes - fiscal unsustainability, low coverage levels and a high degree of segmentation- and barely addressed the non-contributory element. The reform experiences show however that the intended reforms did not manage to meet their objectives. Firstly, to this day, a large proportion of the population remains inadequately covered by the contributory system. Secondly, the fiscal performance and outcome of the reform was worse than originally planned. The possibilities for the success of these reforms faced several constraints of a structural nature that are independent of the pension system itself and that as a result can not be overcome by a pension reform including mainly the limited savings capacity of some population groups and the instability and precariousness of the labor markets in the region. The Latin American experience shares similarities with that of China in terms of coverage, labor market informality. Both cases attest to the importance of combining contributory and non-contributory components in pension reform design.Pension reform; contributory schemes; coverage; Fiscal unsustainability; Contributory coverage; contribution density; fragmentation; transition costs; pension reform in Latin America; pension reform in China

Chicago, Keynes and Fiscal Policy

During the first half of the 1930’s, the founders of the Chicago School of economics and John Maynard Keynes in England advocated public works and as a cure for unemployment and a way to overcome the Great Depression. Counter cyclical fiscal policy was seen as a feasible strategy to attenuate the phases of the economic cycle. The quantity theory of money coupled with the hypothesis of wage and price rigidity provided the theoretical underpinnings for this policy proposal. These economists argued that a monetary policy channeled through the banking system was ineffective. In particular, Chicago economists identified two key features that exemplified this restriction: the instability of the circulation velocity of money and the fragility and underdevelopment of the banking system and financial structure. Fiscal policy was thus advocated on the basis of market rigidities and the impotency of monetary policy. By the end of the decade both Chicago economists and Keynes had departed from this fiscal policy stance. The former became concerned with the inflationar

The Analysis of ‘Leading Sectors’: A Long term view of 18 Latin American economies

In the 1950s and 60s, in Latin America structuralism was considered as the preeminent form of analysis of economic development and growth. Nowadays, in contrast, as a mode of analysis structuralism is distinctly unfashionable, and has been superceded by newer endogenous growth theories, which build on earlier neoclassical contributions. Beyond broad endorsements of enhancing human capital, promoting infrastructure provision and the importance of sustaining investment levels, it is arguable whether endogenous growth theories been able to shed much light on the dynamics of growth. This paper revindicates the utility of structuralist analysis in the analysis of Latin American growth patterns. Through some simple empirical tests, it explores the relationship between economic growth and structural performance. Using as high a level of disaggregation as the data allows, we use dynamic panel data analysis together with a steady state model to calculate the elasticities of sectoral growth to overall output. The implications for resource allocation and policies to promote particular sectors are discussed.Growth, Structural Change, Latin America, Kaldor Growth Laws, Economic Development

Informe sobre el Seminari 'La cultura investigadora a l'aula'

Abstract not availabl

Entorn de la Comissió Provincial de formació

Abstract not availabl

Sudáfrica: un caso de desarme nuclear unilateral

Cuando el 24 de marzo de 1993, el entonces Presidente Frederik W. de Klerk informó a una sesión especial del Parlamento sudafricano del desmantelamiento y la destrucción de las armas nucleares que poseía el país, reconociendo formalmente lo que muchos sabían o al menos sospechaban, es decir la posesión de una capacidad limitada de disuasión nuclear, Sudáfrica se transformó oficialmente en el primer caso en el que un país, de forma voluntaria, había decidido deshacerse de sus armas de destrucción masiva (el llamado “nuclear rollback”). Desde entonces, la experiencia sudafricana de desarme ha sido reiteradamente citada como ejemplo de desarme y de no proliferación y como caso de estudio del que se pueden extraer importantes lecciones susceptibles de ser aplicadas a otros países con armas nucleares. Sin embargo, para poder entender el proceso que desembocó en la destrucción de las armas nucleares que poseía el país, debemos primero analizar su construcción y adquisición en el contexto de la situación política interior y exterior en ese momento. Como veremos, y a pesar de las declaraciones del gobierno sudafricano, tanto el inicio del programa nuclear sudafricano como su terminación obedecieron más a razones de carácter político que estratégico y de defensa. Desde el punto de vista metodológico y de la utilización de fuentes, el presente trabajo está basado en varios artículos publicados sobre el tema, así como entrevistas con funcionarios del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores sudafricano que se ocupan o se han ocupado de cuestiones de desarme y control de armamentos. Por último, debe aclararse que, probablemente por el secreto con el que se llevó tanto el programa de construcción de armas nucleares como su desmantelamiento, y aunque hay varios estudios sobre el tema, la bibliografía no es especialmente abundante, en particular en lo que a documentos oficiales se refiere

Informe de la Comissió Executiva: marc sociopolític 2008-2012

Abstract not availabl