Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-12-31DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-132-14
J. Brid, Rodrigo Lopez
{"title":"Central America and the pandemic: Macroeconomic policy challenges","authors":"J. Brid, Rodrigo Lopez","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-132-14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-132-14","url":null,"abstract":"This article has a twofold purpose: to describe the social and economic situation in the countries of the Central American subregion prior to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and to provide a comparative analysis of the macroeconomic policies introduced by the governments of these countries in response to this health crisis. As a central part of that analysis, it looks at the main structural policy challenges for the enhancement of social protection and reactivation of production activity and employment to be met by these countries during and after the pandemic. The need for a national compact around a new development agenda is explored, with special emphasis on external elements that should be coupled with national policies, such as regional coordination, international cooperation and finance, and a restructuring of financial and lending institutions.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45591227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-12-31DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-132-11
M. Savona
{"title":"A “new normal” as a “new essential”? COVID-19, digital transformations and employment structures","authors":"M. Savona","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-132-11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-132-11","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the new policy challenges that have emerged as a result of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The “new normal” should acknowledge the “new essential” in terms of jobs and sectors. First, the paper examines the trade-off between health policies and anti-recessionary policies. It studies the economic impact of lockdown on households and firms and, relatedly, the slowdown in global value chain-related trade. It the examines lessons that can be learned from this crisis in areas that were topical before the outbreak and are likely to be even more so after it. These include the need to steer digital transformation so as to minimize negative impacts on jobs and sectors while reflecting critically on their “essentiality” and the need for concerted policy action to ensure good governance of health data.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48859976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-12-31DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-132-15
N. Lustig, M. Tommasi
{"title":"COVID-19 and social protection of poor and vulnerable groups in Latin America: A conceptual framework","authors":"N. Lustig, M. Tommasi","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-132-15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-132-15","url":null,"abstract":"The growing crisis caused by the coronavirus disease pandemic has dire implications for Latin American societies. As is often the case, the most vulnerable sectors of society —especially those living in extreme poverty— are being hit the hardest. This article identifies strategies and specific responses designed to achieve three goals: (i) reduce epidemiological risks to save lives; (ii) protect livelihoods; and (iii) ensure human capital accumulation. Epidemiological externalities, as well as humanitarian concerns, demand universal social inclusion. In order to protect the lives, health, livelihoods and human capital of the poor and vulnerable, it will be essential to: implement targeted and decisive interventions at the local level that go beyond transferring cash; allocate adequate resources to fund income support and other key interventions; and involve on local actors and grass-roots organizations for the interventions to be effective.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45977682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-12-31DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-132-3
J. Ocampo
{"title":"The COVID-19 crisis in Latin America in historical perspective","authors":"J. Ocampo","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-132-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-132-3","url":null,"abstract":"This essay compares the COVID-19 crisis in Latin America with two long-lasting crises (the Great Depression and the debt crisis) and two more recent and shorter ones (the 1997 Asian crisis and the 2008–2009 North Atlantic crisis). The analysis indicates that almost all external shocks, whether associated with external financing, the terms of trade, trade volumes or remittances, have been weaker during the current crisis. What has mainly been lacking is international financial cooperation. The severity of the crisis has therefore been due more to domestic factors: the fact that the region was the global epicentre of the pandemic for several months and that the crisis has come on top of five years of poor economic performance and three decades of slow growth. For this reason, the region needs to change its development patterns on top of implementing policies to overcome the crisis.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45593264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-12-31DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-132-6
J. G. Palma
{"title":"Why the rich always stay rich (no matter what, no matter the cost)","authors":"J. G. Palma","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-132-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-132-6","url":null,"abstract":"This article returns to the Ricardian tradition of understanding income distribution as the outcome of an “antagonistic” conflict with a multiplicity of actors and struggles, where history, politics and institutions matter as much as economic “fundamentals”. Because this relates to the political sphere, there are no purely logical solutions to the conflict, but rather options in a scenario of multiple equilibria. In deregulated markets, this conflict favours the supremacy of unproductive rent (especially those of “inefficiency”), to the detriment of operating profits, affecting investment and productivity growth. Moreover, dysfunctional institutions have the “ability to persist”, thus transforming the domination into a “stationary process”: the unbalancing impacts of shocks have only limited lifespans. When, in democracy, the Latin American oligarchy limits change and weakens the State through Buchanian-style constitutional straitjackets, they redesign their distributional strategies and absorb elements of opposing ideologies to keep their own hegemonic.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41572008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-09-30DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-131-9
R. Montero, Alvaro Miranda
{"title":"The determinants of life satisfaction among Chilean workers","authors":"R. Montero, Alvaro Miranda","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-131-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-131-9","url":null,"abstract":"This article puts forward evidence to identify the different domains that contribute to life satisfaction among a sample of Chilean workers, using the two-layer model developed by van Praag, Frijters and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2003). The results show that satisfaction in the domains of money, privacy, leisure, family life, health and work have a positive (and statistically significant) effect on life satisfaction, when controlling for a variable that attempts to measure workers’ personality traits. The evidence reveals that the effects of family life, leisure, health and work outweigh those of money and privacy. Separate estimations were made by gender, age and educational level, to analyse heterogeneity in the relationship between degrees of satisfaction in the different life domains and overall life satisfaction. The results are robust to the different specifications used to explain satisfaction domains.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46336630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-09-30DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-131-2
Ramiro Albrieu, Gabriel Palazzo, A. Australia, B. Canada, C. Chile, D. Peru
{"title":"Mapping social conflicts in natural resources: A text mining study of extractive activities","authors":"Ramiro Albrieu, Gabriel Palazzo, A. Australia, B. Canada, C. Chile, D. Peru","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-131-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-131-2","url":null,"abstract":"Applying text mining techniques, a methodology was developed to measure the number of social conflicts related to the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources. The study focuses on conflicts in four mining countries (Australia, Canada, Chile and Peru) between 2003 and 2016, based on more than 20,000 articles from the leading newspapers of each country. A statically significant correlation was found between the main index and mineral rents as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). However, the results should be interpreted with caution since endogeneity issues have not been addressed and the indices could be biased by various, country-specific factors. This study’s main outcome is a database with different indices of soft conflicts related to the exploitation of non-renewables natural resources and its media coverage in Australia, Canada, Chile and Peru.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48311976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-09-30DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-131-10
Emerson Marinho, M. Benegas
{"title":"Constant real expenditure policy: The macroeconomic impacts of budget composition and a primary surplus","authors":"Emerson Marinho, M. Benegas","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-131-10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-131-10","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses the fiscal policy of constant real expenditure recently adopted by Brazil’s fiscal authorities. It also compares the policy of maintaining a primary surplus as a proportion of gross domestic product with that of changing the composition of spending in favour of investment in order to identify which of the two policies is more efficient in promoting economic growth. We investigate the effects of these policies on longand short-term consumption, investment, labour supply and output and the reaction of the term structure of interest rates. We also analyse the relationship between these fiscal policies and welfare. We use a representative agent model of intertemporal utility maximization subject to budget constraint, with perfect foresight and an infinite horizon.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46407770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-09-30DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-131-4
J. Ramírez-Álvarez, Paul Carrillo-Maldonado
{"title":"Indicator of the efficiency of value added tax and income tax collection in Ecuador","authors":"J. Ramírez-Álvarez, Paul Carrillo-Maldonado","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-131-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-131-4","url":null,"abstract":"This paper outlines a methodology to measure the efficiency of revenue collection by tax administrations. The proposed methodology is aimed in particular at developing countries that do not have enough disaggregated information to measure tax gaps (registration, filing, veracity and payment) using traditional methods. The proposed indices are based on estimations of the structural balances of public finances, and rises in the indices can be interpreted as a comprehensive narrowing of tax gaps. The methodology is applied to Ecuador’s value added tax (VAT) and income tax, producing results that show that a more efficient tax administration leads to revenue growth.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42783639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cepal ReviewPub Date : 2020-09-30DOI: 10.18356/16840348-2020-131-11
Gaspar Núñez Rodríguez, José Antonio, Romero Tellaeche
{"title":"Nationalism and development: An alternative for Mexico","authors":"Gaspar Núñez Rodríguez, José Antonio, Romero Tellaeche","doi":"10.18356/16840348-2020-131-11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18356/16840348-2020-131-11","url":null,"abstract":"The most developed countries have generally had an active State, a driving, regulatory and protectionist State, among other roles, although the most consolidated concept seems to be that of a developmental State. In this paper, a social accounting matrix of Mexico is constructed in order to design a dynamic-recursive applied general equilibrium model to analyse and quantify the impact of policies that were promoted by the State; in particular, policies aimed at increasing private savings and subsidies for the consumption of domestic inputs. The implementation of these simple policies was found to have a substantial positive impact overall, from which important economic policy elements for a development strategy emerge.","PeriodicalId":46450,"journal":{"name":"Cepal Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43253376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}