This paper assesses the link between democracy and inequality. Inequality is measured at the cohort level with pseudo-panel data built from nine Latin American countries' household surveys (1995-2009, biannual).
... See More + Democracy is measured as a stock during long periods of time both before and after each cohort's year of birth. The paper presents evidence that long-run historical patterns in the degree of democracy relate to income inequality. However, this relationship is non-monotonic: inequality ?rst increases with the stock of democracy before falling. The paper also presents evidence that education may be a mechanism explaining this result.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7153 JAN 01, 2015
Handling charges in Caribbean ports are two to three times higher than in similar ports in other regions of the world. In some cases, it costs significantly less to ship a container to Hong Kong SAR, China, or Europe than it does to ship to a neighboring island no more than 100 miles away.
... See More + The reasons for high port-handling costs are linked to procedural inefficiencies along the logistics chain, high freight rates that shipping lines attribute to empty backhauls, and the poor performance of port management and operations. The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States shares the larger Caribbean region's advantages, challenges, and concerns related to the performance of port management and operations. Yet performance assessments have been difficult to make because of data constraints. This report seeks to provide such an assessment along four distinct policy dimensions: (i) traffic development, (ii) the institutional and regulatory framework, (iii) infrastructure development, and (iv) performance, including pricing and finance issues. The report concludes by benchmarking the efficiency of Organization of Eastern Caribbean States ports against other Latin American ports using a stochastic frontier approach, and providing a list of next steps for further research and policy prioritization. To make the current analysis possible, a rigorous exercise in the collection of primary data was conducted, using standardized templates adapted specifically to the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States context. The collection of data proved to be particularly difficult on financial and performance metrics, since many of the ports lack strong statistical systems and institutions.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7162 JAN 01, 2015
Cubas, Diana; Briceno-Garmendia, Cecilia; Bofinger, Heinrich C.
This paper advances research on inequality with unique, new data on income distribution in 61 countries, including 20 Latin American countries, to explore the effects of political parties on redistribution.
... See More + First, consistent with a central -- but still contested -- assumption of the political economy literature, left-wing governments redistribute more. In addition, consistent with recent research on the importance of party organization and the organizational differences between younger and older parties, older left-wing parties are more likely to internalize the long-run costs of redistribution and to be more credible in their commitment to redistribution, leading them to redistribute less. With entirely different data, the paper also provides evidence on mechanisms: left-wing governments not only redistribute more, they tax more; older left-wing parties, though, tax less than younger ones.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7129 DEC 01, 2014
This paper builds on previous studies to uncover evidence suggesting that cyclical fluctuations in returns to schooling are determined by fluctuations in foreign demand, which tend to be positively correlated with returns to schooling.
... See More + The effect of export fluctuations (driven by changes in foreign demand) seems to be attenuated by labor market rigidities, such as constraints on employers to hire temporary workers on an hourly basis. This evidence suggests that countries that have flexible labor markets and experience volatility in their external demand might also experience volatility in returns to schooling. The paper discusses why this might be a concern for developing countries.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7144 DEC 01, 2014
Over the past decade (2003-12), Latin America has experienced strong income growth and a notable reduction in income inequality, with the region's Gini coefficient falling from 55.6 to 51.8.
... See More + Previous studies have warned about the sustainability of such a decline, and this paper presents evidence of stagnation in the pace of reduction of income inequality in Latin America since 2010. This phenomenon of stagnation is robust to different measures of inequality and is largely attributable to the impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Mexico and Central America, where inequality rose after 2010 as labor income recovered. Moreover, this paper finds evidence that much of the continuation of inequality reduction after the crisis at the country level has been due to negative or zero income growth for households in the top of the income distribution, and lower growth of the incomes of the poorest households. The crisis also highlighted weaknesses in the region's labor markets and the heavy reliance on public transfers to redistribute, underscoring the vulnerability of the region's recent social gains to global economic conditions.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7146 DEC 01, 2014
The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region has seen a decade of remarkable growth and income convergence. Growth has been a key driver for reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity.
... See More + It has been debated how much of this decade of growth has been driven by policy reforms and how much was due to the favorable external conditions. While external factors were supportive and relevant, the effect of domestic policies was just as relevant for explaining LAC's recent growth performance. The emphasis of domestic policy has shifted from stabilization policies to structural policies. In addition, a benchmarking exercise reveals which policy gaps will lead to the highest potential growth-payoffs for each country and helps identify potential trade-offs. The authors analyze growth in LAC using descriptive statistics and growth econometrics. The authors use these results for explaining the pattern of growth in LAC over the last decade, for looking ahead, and to identify potential policy gaps.
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Working Paper 91015 DEC 01, 2014
Araujo, Jorge Thompson; Brueckner, Markus; Clavijo, Mateo; Vostroknutova, Ekaterina; Wacker, Konstantin M.
Latin Americaapos;s population is aging, and many among the growing elderly population are not protected by traditional pension schemes. In response, policy makers have been reevaluating their income protection systems so that between 2000 and 2013, the majority of Latin American countries reformed their social pension schemes to provide near-universal coverage for the elderly.
... See More + Before this unprecedented wave of reform, most income protection in Latin America was provided through contributory pensions available only to formal sector workers. Considering that informal and unpaid employment characterize labor force participation throughout the region, many elderly were left vulnerable to poverty. The new noncontributory pension programs have alleviated this risk. But countries are still evaluating how to best balance the need for inclusivity with the need for fiscal sustainability. This report examines recent reforms in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay. All countries share the goal of comprehensive pension coverage, but each has unique political environments, social conditions, and economic capacities. Design and implementation of coverage expansion, consequently, has diverged. Comparing results across the region reveals which policies have yielded the most equitable and sustainable outcomes. Each chapter includes a comprehensive analysis of a countryapos;s reform experience: a description of significant political and economic developments, the challenges of implementing income protection policies, and prospects for the reformsapos; durability over time. This report represents a significant addition to the literature on income protection for the elderly.
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Publication 92872 NOV 13, 2014
Rofman, Rafael [editor]; Apella, Ignacio [editor]; Vezza, Evelyn [editor]
This paper investigates the effectiveness of protected areas in slowing tropical forest clearing in 64 countries in Asia/Pacific, Africa, and Latin America for the period 2001-2012.
... See More + The investigation compares deforestation rates inside and within 10 kilometers outside the boundary of protected areas. Annual time series of these deforestation rates were constructed from recently published high-resolution data on forest clearing. For 4,028 parks, panel estimation based on a variety of park characteristics was conducted to test if deforestation is lower in protected areas because of their protected status, or if other factors explain the difference. For a sample of 726 parks established since 2002, a test also was conducted to investigate the effect of park establishment on protection. The findings suggest park size, national park status, and management by indigenous people all have significant association with effective protection across regions. For the Asia/Pacific region, the test offers compelling evidence that park establishment has a near-immediate and powerful effect.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7091 NOV 01, 2014
Blankespoor, Brian; Dasgupta, Susmita; Wheeler, David
While the importance of good teaching may be intuitively obvious, over the past decade education research has begun to quantify the high economic stakes around teacher quality.
... See More + In a world where the goals of national education systems are being transformed, from a focus on the transmission of facts and memorization to a focus on student competencies for critical thinking, problem solving, and lifelong learning the demands on teachers are more complex than ever. Governments across the world have put teacher quality and teacher performance under increasing scrutiny. The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region is no exceptions to these trends; indeed, in some key areas of teacher policy, the region is the vanguard of global reform. This study aims to do the following: benchmark the current performance of LACapos;s teachers and identify key issues, share emerging evidence on important reforms of teacher policy being implemented in LAC countries, analyze the political room for maneuver for further reform in LAC.
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The Results in the Latin America and Caribbean Region paper discusses how the countries of the region are improving the lives of their people through growth, jobs and government initiatives.
... See More + The paper features stories of individuals whose lives have been transformed. Projects discussed in the paper include: empowering communities to build peace through opportunities, providing safe water to thousands, attacking malnutrition in rural areas and helping raise millions of families out of poverty.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 92211 OCT 14, 2014
An Enterprise Survey is a firm-level survey of a representative sample of an economys private sector. The surveys cover a broad range of business environment topics including access to finance, competition, corruption, crime, gender, infrastructure, innovation, labor, performance measures, and trade.
... See More + The World Bank has collected this data from face-to-face interviews with top managers and business owners in over 130,000 companies in more than 135 economies.
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Industrial and commercial facilities provide great economic benefit to communities throughout the world. Unfortunately, many industries use or have used practices and materials which have proven toxic to the environment and to those who live and work near contaminated sites.
... See More + The definition and degree of contamination varies at national and regional levels of government, but leaders throughout the world now recognize the hazard that contaminated industrial and service sites present to the wellbeing of their communities and seek innovative ways to finance the remediation of these challenging sites. Industrial contamination can have a severe, direct impact on adjacent communities. The cleanup and redevelopment of a so-called brownfield can improve a communitys economy, provide an opportunity for habitat restoration, and create public space. Cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields can be an effective economic development strategy, with benefits seen in two timeframes. First, there is an immediate and one-time capital expenditure for cleanup activities, infrastructure, and construction. The initial investment generates tax revenues, temporary family-wage jobs, and indirect economic benefits within the community. Secondly, there is a long-term economic impact from remediation projects in the form of higher property values, long-term tax revenues, and the attraction of external capital to the community by tenants of the revitalized property. The economic benefit of contaminated site redevelopment is perhaps most clearly illustrated by permanent job creation from the restored properties. The deleterious effects of industrial contamination across all facets of a community typically provide a strong incentive for leaders to seek financing mechanisms that make site remediation possible.
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