Does Inequality Harm Income Mobility and Growth? An Assessment of the Growth Impact of Income and Education Inequality in Paraguay 1992-2002

Latin America is the most unequal region of the world in terms of income or expenditure, as well as regarding other aspects of economic or social exclusion. The region suffered the lost decade of the nineteen eighties, and experienced a modest recovery in the nineteen nineties. In the nineteen nineties, most of the governments implemented stabilization politics, more or less close to the proposals of the Washington Consensus. Paraguay itself, however, neither suffered a debt crisis nor a mayor economic instability during the eighties, so the stabilization policies would not have been necessary or useful for the Paraguayan economy and business cycles in the nineties. Nevertheless, many of the macroeconomic policies applied in Paraguay during the nineties were close to the Washington Consensus. The most striking macroeconomic result of the decade was a per capita income decrease beginning in late 1995, hand in hand with a poverty increase after 1996. Given the persistently high levels of poverty incidence in Paraguay to date, understanding the determinants of growth at the household level in Paraguayan economy remains an important but under-researched field in economics. This appears to be particularly true for the question whether inequality has a positive or negative effect on economic growth, a question that is both fundamental in (development) economics and highly relevant for poverty reduction policies. Although the effect of inequality on growth has important implications for poverty (Bourguignon, 2004; Ravallion, 1997), empirical evidence on this link is virtually inexistent for Paraguay.

Determinants of Student Achievements in the Primary Education of Paraguay

The idea that schooling scores depend on a combination of family background characteristics, ability and school (institutional) variables is quite clear. Regarding the issue of intergenerational transmission of inequality in the educational system, the most important question would be if and to what extent could a better institutional performance of the school service compensate for problems related to family background. By means of the estimation of a reduced form equation for selected scores, we investigate the impact of institutional performance on scores after controlling for family background and individual characteristics. We do this by using a novel data set and an OLS and quantile regression approach to analyze how heterogeneous the process of score generation can be. By providing integral health solutions, minimizing under-nutrition and providing ideal conditions in the classroom, training teachers can impact positively on low and mean learning outcomes, thus contributing to an improved educational quality and breaking cycles of intergenerational transmission of inequality. Increasing learning outcomes for levels above the median, only strengthens the transmission of inequality. Consequently, the equality approach should focus on trying to improve the worst scores and our results show that this can be reached at a significant level closing teacher training gaps, improving classroom conditions and improving health and nutrition.

Externalities and Enterprise Software: Helping and Hindering Legal Compliance

Enterprise software helps organizations comply with laws and regulations, yet software itself creates negative externalities that can undermine rights and laws. Software developers are an important regulatory force, yet many know little about how law and software interact. This work examines developer understanding of legal concepts and examples of the software code and law relationship: payroll, Sarbanes Oxley Act, web accessibility, and data protection

The dynamics of inequality change in a highly dualistic economy: Honduras, 1991-2007

We examine the drivers of inequality change in Honduras between 1991-2007, trying to understand why inequality increased in Honduras until 2005, while it was falling in most other Latin American countries. Using annual household surveys, we document first rising inequality between 1991-2005, which is followed by falling inequality thereafter. Using an inequality decomposition technique, we show that the rising inequality between 1991 and 2005 was, for the most part, driven by the dispersion of labour incomes in rural areas. We also show that the extraordinary labour earnings disequalization is mainly the result of a widening wage gap between the tradable and non-tradable sectors and occupations, combined with highly segmented labor markets and poor overall educational progress. The underlying determinants of the divergence between tradable and non-tradable sectors were highly overvalued currencies and poor commodity process for Honduras’ agricultural exports. Between 2005 and 2007, however, the inequality reduction was a result of equalizing trends in labour and non-labour incomes. The commodity boom promoting the tradable sector and remittances (in this order) played a significant role here, with government transfers playing a small supporting role. Since the decline in inequality is largely driven by international factors, we cannot be sure whether the decline in inequality will continue.Inequality, Decomposition, Education, Wages, Honduras, Migration

Poverty, Income Growth and Inequality in Paraguay During the 1990s

The Paraguayan economy did not suffer debt crises in the eighties and had significant growth rates in the second half on the seventies, but poverty remained a problem. Understanding the performance and spatial distribution of poverty and inequality over a period of more than ten years can shed new light on structural causes behind what seems to be a low growth – high poverty – high inequality trap in Paraguay. How did poverty and inequality change during the 1990s. Did inequality reduce income growth? What were the growth determinants and what are the main forces driving inequality changes? These are the questions being answered in this book

Characterization of inequality changes through microeconometric decomposition - Paraguay 1992-2005

The main economic variables have oscillated widely during the 1992 – 2005 period in Paraguay, in association with some macroeconomic and structural transformations, but also following general growth trends and business cycles in the South American region. This can be separated into three sub-periods; 1992 to 1998, 1999 to 2002 and 2003 to 2005. During the early eighties, the Paraguayan economy benefited from high public investment rates resulting from the construction of the Itaipu and Yacyreta hydro-electric power plants. The country made its own way of stability and growth during a period of hyperinflations and external debt crisis in many South American countries. Nevertheless, its economy fell into a growth crisis (still avoiding debt crisis and hyperinflation) during the second half of the eighties, once the construction period of the hydroelectric power plants came to an end. During the first half of the nineties, Paraguayan economy recovered from recession, now driven by agricultural production and a re-export business boom, based on special arrangements for duty rates for electric and electronic equipment imported to the MERCOSUR (Mercado Comun del Sur - regional free trade agreement established in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) region via Paraguay. The agricultural success was based on a recovery of international cotton prices, combined with a successful cotton extension program for small farmers within the country and a quick and widespread expansion of mechanized soybean farming. The commercial success with electric and electronic components was based on re-export. Paraguayan import duty rates from outside MERCOSUR were so low, that Brazilian and Argentine enterprises would prefer to buy these products re-exported from Paraguay, rather than importing themselves from outside MERCOSUR, which would have meant higher duty rates. Before this background, Paraguayan GDP per capita grew until 1995 and then remained relatively stable until 1998. The per capita income1 Gini coefficient fell from 55.8 to 54.0. Mean per capita growth was 0.63% and poverty dropped from 38.2% to 32.1%.

Does Inequality Harm Income Mobility and Growth? An Assessment of the Growth Impact of Income and Education Inequality in Paraguay 1992: 2002

Poverty reduction is entirely determined by the growth rate of population?s mean per capita income1 and by the change in the distribution of income. This places the empirical relation between growth and inequality at the heart of poverty reducing strategies. This study, which estimates the relation for Paraguay, aims to identify the growth effects of income and education inequality while controlling other factors such as initial levels of wealth and human capital, family characteristics and unobserved spatial heterogeneity. The paper uses two sets of small area welfare estimates – often referred to as poverty maps – to estimate five different models of per capita income growth between 1992 and 2002, by comparing pseudo panel samples of these poverty maps. Since the analysis is based on groups of people, grouped in a pseudo panel, the results can be understood as well as an income mobility indicator. In the models used, standard errors were corrected to reflect the uncertainty as a result of income estimates, rather than income observations, being used. These corrections are sizable: standard errors using estimates are between 1 and 20 times larger than using income observations. The more homogeneous the sample is, the lower the error increase. Conditional convergence (initially low income groups grew faster) is confirmed by the results. They indicate that it is income inequality rather than human capital inequality, that affects growth and that this effect is negative. Nevertheless, there are also positive growth effects of human capital inequality, however some not as strong as income inequality results. --

The Right to Work and Finding Work: the Inaccessibility of Private and Public Sector Career Portals

The right to participation in society for people with disabilities is relatively well established in national and international law and convention (UNCRPD), and increasingly in social norms. These rights include the right to work. The majority of job opportunities today are advertised and applied for almost exclusively online in digital form. In late 2017 we performed both automated testing of career sites against WCAG 2.0 and BITV standards and a multi-day detailed laboratory observation of visually impaired and blind testers applying for jobs across 10 German organisations in the public and private sectors. The tests note significant problems with the accessibility of the career sites, both in terms of standards compliance and practical use testing. This study illustrates the barriers that digital technologies can create for people with disabilities. This paper will highlight and classify these issues, explore their causes, and briefly suggest improvements for software developers, employers and regulators

Paraguay: zaghafte "Agenda für ein besseres Land"; Bilanz nach einem Jahr Regierung Nicanor Duarte

"Als Nicanor Duarte am 15. August 2003 das Amt des Staats- und Regierungspräsidenten Paraguays übernahm, waren viele Erwartungen an seine Amtsführung geknüpft. Transparente und effiziente Verwaltung, Kampf gegen Korruption und Armut, das Ende umfassender Straflosigkeit für politisch, wirtschaftlich oder sozial einflussreiche Rechtsbrecher sowie ein Generationswechsel im Stil der paraguayischen Politik, vor allem innerhalb der regierenden Colorado Partei (Asociación Nacional Republicana - ANR), wurden von Duarte vollmundig verkündet und von nicht wenigen für bare Münze genommen. Jetzt, am Ende des ersten seiner fünf Jahre Amtsführung, ist der Moment gekommen, den Versuch einer ersten, wenn auch vorläufigen Bilanz zu unternehmen, welche die Wahlversprechen und Ankündigungen der Regierungserklärung zum Ausgangspunkt nimmt."(Brennpkt. Lat.am/DÜI

Storm Resistant Affordable Housing in Agra, India

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