Cocaine + Surfing: Reviewed by Jack Ryan, Gettysburg College

If you seek a conclusive answer to the question that seems to anchor Chas Smith\u27s Cocaine + Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing\u27s Greatest Love Affair, Did surfing and cocaine start together in Peru and never leave each other\u27s embrace?, you will be disappointed. In his preface, Smith discusses the death of Andy Irons, the three-time world surfing champion from Hawaii who died November 2, 2010, alone in a Dallas hotel room of cardiac arrest brought on by cocaine abuse. Irons was thirty-two years old. According to Smith, no one in the cosseted surfing world was surprised: Drugs and surfing, especially cocaine, felt synonymous with professional surfing those eight-odd years ago (15). Chapter 1, ironically titled The Call to Adventure!, places Smith, our first-person narrator, on a hero\u27s journey. [excerpt

Mejora de los ingresos económicos de los recicladores formales del distrito de Independencia en el periodo 2009-2013

In Peru there is an unmet demand with respect to the municipal solid waste collection service in urban areas, where most of the solid wastes not collected are burned, used as pig food, thrown into rivers, etc. These situations cause environmental and health problems. Improving the collection system and solid waste treatment is an alternative to the solid waste problem. Given the characteristics of Lima, formal recyclers are considered as strategic allies to improve the solid waste collection system. The formalization of recyclers has improved their income, considering that the informal recyclers have low incomes, which does not allow them to improve their quality of life in many aspects. According to the collected and analyzed information of the recyclers´ income when they were informal, their income increased when they become formal.En el Perú se tiene una demanda insatisfecha en el servicio de recolección de residuos sólidos municipales de las áreas urbanas, donde gran parte de los residuos que no son recolectados son quemados, empleados como alimento para cerdos, lanzados a ríos, etc., estás situaciones crean problemas ambientales y de salud. Como alternativas al problema de residuos sólidos, se tiene que mejorar el sistema de recojo y el tratamiento de los residuos sólidos. Teniendo en cuenta las características de Lima, se considera a los recicladores formales como aliados estratégicos para mejorar el sistema de recojo de los residuos sólidos. La formalización de los recicladores ha incidido en la mejora de los ingresos económicos de estos, considerando que los recicladores informales tienen ingresos económicos bajos, que no les permite mejorar en varios aspectos su calidad de vida. Según la información recogida y analizada de los ingresos de los recicladores cuando eran informales, se incrementó cuando pasaron a la formalidad

Teacher Unionization and the Quality of Education in Peru: An Empirical Evaluation Using Survey Data

This paper analyzes the evolution and current profile of teacher unionization and estimate the impact of unionization on the quality of public education in Peru. The research uses data from a 1999 household survey (ENAHO) and from a recent evaluation of a public program oriented to improve the quality of Peruvian public education. Regarding the evolution of unionization, there is evidence compatible with the hypothesis that the rate of teacher unionization has dropped during the last three decades, but especially during the 1990s, due basically to the hiring of temporary teachers. With respect to the profile of unionization, it is found that unionized teachers are older and more experienced, and that males are more common in the union membership. There is no empirical evidence that unionized teachers enjoy better access to educational infrastructure at the polidocente (larger) schools, but they do have better access at the multigrado (intermediate) schools. For the impact of unionization on quality, Hoxby’s production function model was adapted to the Peruvian case, in which public education is centralized and in which teachers do not have major influence on the education budget at the school or district levels. The model is estimated to test whether unionization has an impact on teachers’ effort and student achievement, but there is no empirical support for these hypotheses. The data indicate that unionization does not currently seem to be a major factor affecting the quality of educational services in the Peruvian public education system.

Perspectivas del financiamiento corporativo y el mercado de valores del Perú

El grado de desarrollo de los mercados financieros son un indicativo del crecimiento económico de los países. Una alternativa para el financiamiento de las empresas es la colocación de bonos corporativos a través del mercado de valores, así, este estudio pretende revisar el comportamiento en el mercado de valores peruano relativo a las emisiones de bonos corporativos comparativamente durante los periodos 2005-2010 y 2015-2019, como reflejo de la situación del mercado actual peruano. Es una investigación de tipo documental y descriptiva, recopilando datos relativos a las colocaciones de bonos corporativos (montos, plazos de vencimiento y tasas de interés), mediante la revisión de notas de prensa de la Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores (SMV) y los respectivos informes acumulados, de las diferentes compañías clasificadoras de riesgo aprobadas por SMV, para cada una de las empresas en estudio. Se observó en promedio un aumento en las emisiones, así como la disminución de las tasas de interés y ambas tendencias, fueron estadísticamente significativas. Por otra parte, dos de las empresas revisadas, emitieron bonos verdes tanto en el mercado nacional como en el internacional. Estos, son indicadores favorables para la economía del Perú, los cuales validan que viene en crecimiento y más aún, predispuestas al cambio global en donde se busca más que el financiamiento empresarial, un impacto positivo en el ámbito social y en el medio ambiente, con la emisión de bonos verdes.//The degree of development of financial markets is an indicator of countries’ economic growth. An alternative financing for companies is the placement of corporate bonds through the stock market, so this study aims to comparatively review the behavior of the Peruvian stock market in relation to corporate bond issues during the periods 2005-2010 and 2015-2019, as a reflection of the current situation of the Peruvian market. It is a documentary and descriptive study that collects data related to corporate bond placements (amounts, maturity terms and interest rates), through the review of press releases from the Superintendence of the Securities Market (SMV) and the respective cumulative reports of the different risk classifiers approved by the SMV, for each of the companies under study. On average, an increase in emissions was observed, as well as a decrease in interest rates, and both trends were statistically significant. On the other hand, two of the companies examined issued green bonds in both the domestic and international markets. These are favorable indicators for Peru’s economy, validating that it is growing and even more so, predisposed to global change in which more than business financing is sought, a positive impact in the social and environmental spheres, through the issuance of green bonds

How effective are rewards programs in promoting payment card usage? Empirical evidence

Card issuers have mainly relied on rewards programs as their main strategic driver to increase electronic payments. However, there is scarce evidence on the effectiveness of rewards programs. This paper offers novel evidence on two key issues: i) it measures the impact of rewards programs on the use of payment cards; and ii) it quantifies their economic impact in terms of the cash substitution. The results show that rewards may significantly modify preferences for card payments, their economic impact vary significantly across types of rewards and merchant activities and rewards seem to be more effective on average for debit cardholders. JEL Classification: G20, D12, E41cardholders, merchants, payment cards, preferences, rewards

Titling, Credit Constraints and Rental Markets in Rural Peru: Exploring Channels and Conditioned Impacts

This paper constructs a baseline and pursues an overall impact evaluation of the PETT (Programa Especial de Titulación de Tierras), an ambitious rural titling program created in Peru in 1992. The general evaluation of impacts on farmers shows a picture of not many positive effects, at least in the short period of the evaluation (2004-2006) and for a limited sample of farmers located in the Coast and Sierra regions. On average, most income variables (and income composition) do not seem to be impacted by titling, and there are no detectable effects on investments (except for permanent pasture in the Sierra) or other outcome variables, such as credit, land markets, or land conflicts. However, this general picture hides important impacts that may occur for some groups of farmers, or for farmers facing different constraints in the pre-intervention stage. Given the limitations, we investigated in more detail two important channels that are behind the potential impacts of rural titling programs: credit access and use of land rental markets.

Empresarios, Estado y el juego político en el Perú, 1850-1930

Comenta el reciente libro "Empresas británicas, economía y política en el Perú, 1850-1934" de Rory Miller, el cual representa una contribución significativa para la comprensión de nuestra historia económica y empresarial.