Real wages inequality and globalization in Latin America before 1940

La Historia Económica en Latinoamérica. Edición a cargo de Pablo Martín Aceña, Adolfo Meisel, Carlos Newland.Editada en la Fundación Empresa PúblicaHacia 1914 existían notables diferencias económicas entre los países del Cono Sur y Cuba y el resto de América Latina. El artículo indaga las razones de estas diferencias, cuando aparecieron, así como la distancia existente entre los países latinoamericanos, los de la cuenca mediterránea y el líder industrial. Se ocupa de examinar el papel que desempeñaron las fuerzas demográficas, la localización geográfica y el grado de globalización e integración económica. El trabajo utiliza nuevos datos de salarios reales y precios relativos de los factores de siete países latinoamericanos y de tres regiones mediterráneas. Estos datos se comparan con la información disponible para Gran Bretaña y los Estados Unidos.By 1914, there were huge economic gaps between the Soutbem Cone plus Cuba and the rest of Latin America. Can they be explained by the varying ability of these countries to exploit the first great globalization boom afier about 1870? Or did the gaps appear much earlier? And what about the gaps between Latin America and the Mediterranean, let alone with industrial leaders like Britain? What role did geographic isolation, globalization and demographic forces play in the process? Conventional GDP estimates are much too coarse to confront these questions. This essay uses a new data base on real wages and relative factor prices for seven Latin American and three Mediterranean regions, the latter being a source of so many of immigrants for the former. These ten regions, plus comparative information firom Britain and the United States, form the data base for the paper.Publicad

Increase in HIV sexual risk behaviour in homosexual men in Scotland, 1996–2002: prevention failure?

<b>Objective</b>: To investigate trends in homosexual men’s sexual risk behaviour for HIV infection in Scotland. <b>Methods</b>: Cross sectional surveys in 1996, 1999, and 2002 were carried out in "gay" bars in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland. 6508 men—2276 (79% response rate) in 1996, 2498 (78%) in 1999, and 1734 (62%) in 2002. <b>Results</b>: In 1996, 10.7% of men surveyed and in 1999, 11.2% reported unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) with casual partners, compared with 18.6% in 2002 (p<0.001). There was also a significant increase in men reporting that they "knew" their casual partners’ HIV status, despite no increase in HIV testing among men who reported UAI with casual partners. In 2002, increases in UAI with more than one partner, in UAI with casual partners and in reporting seroconcordance remained significant after adjusting for confounding factors including HIV testing status and demographic characteristics. <b>Conclusions</b>: High risk sexual behaviour among homosexual men in Scotland increased between 1999 and 2002. Men showed increased confidence of shared antibody status, despite no increase in HIV testing, or evidence of discussion of HIV status. Explanations for this must include consideration of a cultural shift in the perception of HIV and "prevention failure" on the part of governments and health agencies