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

Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing enterobacteriaceae : epidemiology and dynamics of fecal carriage

ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae (EPE) has become a major cause of community acquired urinary tract infection (UTI), and fecal carriage of EPE is emerging worldwide. The aims of this thesis were to study the molecular epidemiology of ESBL-enzymes in Stockholm (I) to evaluate treatment alternatives to the carbapenems for EPE (I-III), and to study the duration of fecal carriage and identify factors associated with prolonged carriage (IV). Paper I describes a consecutive collection of EPE (n=169). The distribution of ESBL-enzymes and clonal relatedness of the isolates was determined with PCR, DNA sequencing and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Antimicrobial activity was evaluated using gradient test, broth microdilution and disk diffusion, and the susceptibility test methods were compared for parenteral !-lactams. We found that CTX-M-15 (75%) and CTX-M-14 (23%) were the dominating genotypes, that the collection was largely polyclonal and that 41% of E. coli belonged to the international clone sequence type (ST) 131. We concluded that there are several oral (mecillinam, nitrofurantoin, fosfomycin) and parenteral (piperacillin-tazobactam, tigecycline, temocillin) treatment alternatives for E. coli but few for K. pneumoniae. We also showed that susceptibility rates obtained with Etest and disk diffusion (DD) were not in agreement with the reference method broth microdilution for piperacillin- tazobactam (TZP). Etest and DD are therefore not reliable to detect resistance to TZP, with the breakpoints used at the time of the study. In paper II the novel cephalosporin CXA-101 (later known as ceftolozane) in combination with tazobactam (CXA-201) was evaluated against the same collection of isolates as in paper I, and compared to other !-lactam/!-lactamase inhibitors. MICs were determined with broth microdilution and susceptibility to CXA-201 was 88-98%, depending on the concentration of tazobactam and the tentative breakpoint used. All ACL-resistant and 94% of the TZP-resistant isolates were CXA-201 susceptible. We concluded that ceftolozane-tazobactam (CXA-201) is a potential future therapeutic option against EPE, especially for TZP-resistant isolates. Paper III evaluates the clinical and bacteriological activity of pivmecillinam for patients treated for lower UTI caused by an EPE (n=8). The clinical cure (resolved UTI symptoms after completed treatment) was high (8/8) but bacteriological cure (< 103 CFU/ml at follow-up after 30 days) was low (2/8), although none of the patients with persisting bacteriuria relapsed within 6 months. In paper IV we studied the duration and dynamics of ESBL-carriage. A cohort of patients (n=61) were followed with fecal samples and questionnaires about antimicrobial treatment and risk factors for EPE, 1, 3, 6 and 12 months after EPE infection. EPE strains were subjected to PFGE, PCR for phylogrouping, detection of CTX-M phylogroup, pabB (ST131) and virulence genes and PCR based replicon typing. Patient and strain related variables were compared for carriers and non-carriers at 12 months. We concluded that EPE carriage is common 12 months after infection (43%) and that persisting carriage may be associated with E. coli phylogroup B2 and CTX-M-9. The strain background frequently changes throughout the carriage and negative samples do not imply eliminated carriage. This knowledge will hopefully contribute to providing better medical care of patients with infection caused by EPE. It may also prove important for defining patients in require of prolonged isolation in single rooms or cohorts. Thereby the spread of EPE in hospitals and long term care facilities can be limited

Regional monetary cooperation in Latin America

Latin American has the longest history of regional integration efforts in the developing world. This paper analyzes the experience of regional monetary cooperation in Latin America over the past three decades. This experience has been overall successful but also uneven, both in terms of country coverage and services provided. Although strictly not a form of monetary cooperation, development financing does play a useful complementary role by proving counter-cyclical or at least stable financing during crises, when private financing for developing countries dries up

¿Un crecimiento menos volátil?: el papel de las instituciones financieras regionales

Incluye Bibliografí

Comparación de la dinámica e impactos de los choques financieros y de términos del intercambio en América Latina en el período 1980-2006

Incluye BibliografíaResumenEn el período 1960-2006, en los países de América Latina se observa un aumento de la frecuencia y la amplitud de los ciclos económicos. Entre 1960 y 1995 la región registró, en promedio, una aceleración (desaceleración); cada cuatro años, frecuencia que pasó a dos años a partir de 1995. Asimismo, la amplitud promedio de los ciclos del PIBprácticamente se duplicó a partir de 1995.La dinámica del ciclo económico ha estado históricamente ligada a las fluctuaciones de los términos del intercambio y los flujos financieros. La importancia relativa de aquellas ha variado con el tiempo: el coeficiente de correlación entre el ciclo del producto interno bruto regional y las fluctuaciones financieras aumentó significativamente en la década de 1990. Las fluctuaciones de los términos del intercambio tuvieron una importancia relativa mayor entre 1960 y 1980 y entre 2002-2006.Dada la importancia de las fluctuaciones de los términos del intercambio y de los flujos financieros en los ciclos económicos, el documento identifica y describe la dinámica de las fluctuaciones más extremas (es decir, los choques); de los términos del intercambio y los flujos financieros de América Latina en el período 1980-2006 evaluando su impacto sobre el crecimiento económico.Se identifican los choques de acuerdo con una metodología estadística que separa los componentes de tendencia y ciclo de la serie. Luego, sobre la base de la construcción de distribuciones de probabilidad empíricas y los respectivos intervalos de confianza, se definen los años de choques financieros y de términos del intercambio

Predator-Induced Vertical Behavior of a Ctenophore

Although many studies have focused on Mnemiopsis leidyi predation, little is known about the role of this ctenophore as prey when abundant in native and invaded pelagic systems. We examined the response of the ctenophore M. leidyi to the predatory ctenophore Beroe ovata in an experiment in which the two species could potentially sense each other while being physically separated. On average, M. leidyi responded to the predator’s presence by increasing variability in swimming speeds and by lowering their vertical distribution. Such behavior may help explain field records of vertical migration, as well as stratified and near-bottom distributions of M. leidyi

Macroeconomic policies for investment and sustained and sustainable development

Climate crises will adversely impact the already weak and volatile growth of Latin American and Caribbean countries and significant public and private investment in adaptation and mitigation will be needed to address the effects of climate change. This is no easy proposition in a region that underinvests and has a complex macroeconomic scenario. Macroeconomic and financing policies have great potential to boost investment, but fiscal policy must safeguard public investment during fiscal consolidation processes and find ways to enhance it during recovery phases in order to crowd in private investment. Monetary policy, in coordination with macroprudential regulation, must not only help to manage domestic demand over the economic cycle, but also embed climate-related risk in financing

The effects of party labels on vote choice with realistic candidate differentiation

In this paper we test how much party labels influence vote choices between candidates when voters have access to realistically distributed information about candidate positions and demographics. We do not seek to adjudicate a long-running debate about the role of party labels, but present some nuances on the two archetypal theoretical views on vote choices. We use data from the Representative Audit of Britain (RAB) and the British Elections Study (BES) to generate electoral match-ups between randomly selected Conservative versus Labour candidates, with only half of respondents seeing party labels in addition to candidates' positions and demographics. For our experiment fielded in October 2021, we find negligible to moderate effects of party labels on vote choices. Our results suggest the information on candidate positions and party labels largely act as substitutes for one another, with only modest changes when party labels are made explicit

Can Citizens Guess How Other Citizens Voted Based on Demographic Characteristics

How well do citizens understand the associations between social groups and political divisions in their societies? Previous research has indicated systematic biases in how the demographic composition of party supporters are perceived, but this need not imply that citizens misperceive the likely voting behaviour of specific individuals. We report results from two experiments where subjects were provided with randomly selected demographic profiles of respondents to the 2017 British Election Study (BES) and then asked to assess either (1) which party that individual was likely to have voted for in the 2017 UK election or (2) whether that individual was likely to have voted Leave or Remain in the 2016 UK referendum on EU membership. We find that, despite substantial overconfidence in individual responses, on average citizens’ guesses broadly reflect the actual distribution of groups supporting the parties and referendum positions