This paper describes how Latin America and the Caribbean has been integrating financially with countries in the North and South since the 2000s.
... See More + The paper shows that the region is increasingly more connected with the rest of the world, even relative to gross domestic product. The region's connections with South countries have been growing faster than with North countries, especially during the second half of the 2000s. Nevertheless, North countries continue to be the region's principal source and receiver of flows. The changes reflect significant increases in portfolio investments, syndicated loans, and mergers and acquisitions. Growth of greenfield investments has been more subdued after the initial high level. Greenfield investments in the region have been in sectors in which the source country has a comparative advantage, not where the receiver country has an advantage. Mergers and acquisitions have been in sectors in which the receiver country has a comparative advantage.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7190 FEB 01, 2015
Didier, Tatiana; Moretti, Matias; Schmukler, Sergio L.
The focus of this document is to provide a wide range of ideas and options to improve the inclusion of environmental sustainability throughout the road transportation project cycle (system planning, project planning and design, construction, and operation and maintenance) based on environmental sustainability indicators and highlighting environmentally sustainable products and materials for road construction.
... See More + Sustainable economic growth in low- and middle-income countries is a key to poverty reduction and shared prosperity, which in part is dependent on reliable and safe transportation systems. Road and highway systems provide a critical function in creating and maintaining a desirable quality of life.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 93903 FEB 01, 2015
Montgomery, Robert; Schirmer, Howard Jr.; Hirsch, Art
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 third report in the Turn Down the Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).
... See More + The focus is on the risks of climate change to development. While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the climate change repercussions for human well-being. The report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report (2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that focused on the consequences of climate change for present day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early onset impacts at lower levels of warming.
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Pensions at a Glance in Latin America and the Caribbean provides for the first time an ample range of indicators for comparing pension system design of 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
... See More + The indicators are comparable with those of OECD countries and selected G20 members, published by the OECD. The biggest pension policy challenge faced by most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) today is low coverage of formal pension systems, both in terms of the proportion of workers participating in pension schemes and the proportion of the elderly receiving some kind of pension income. Efforts to close the coverage gap, for example, through non-contributory pensions, are therefore at the heart of the pension policy debate in the region. However, these policies might pose significant fiscal challenges in the next decades as the population ages. Chapter 2 presents three main indicators describing the demographic conditions relevant for pension policy, namely fertility rates, life expectancy and old-age support ratios. This is followed by a systematic comparison, in Chapter 3, of system designs across countries using the standard OECD Pensions at a Glance typology and presenting several key indicators of adequacy, including gender-specific gross and net replacement rates and pension wealth at different income levels. Finally, Chapter 4 provides the profiles of each pension system in Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of their architecture, rules and parameters.
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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.
This third report in the Turn Down the Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).
... See More + The focus is on the risks of climate change to development. While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the climate change repercussions for human well-being. The report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report (2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that focused on the consequences of climate change for present day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early onset impacts at lower levels of warming.
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This third report in the Turn Down the Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).
... See More + The focus is on the risks of climate change to development. While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the climate change repercussions for human well-being. The report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report (2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that focused on the consequences of climate change for present day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early onset impacts at lower levels of warming.
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This third report in the Turn Down the Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).
... See More + The focus is on the risks of climate change to development. While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the climate change repercussions for human well-being. The report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report (2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that focused on the consequences of climate change for present day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early onset impacts at lower levels of warming.
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This third report in the Turn Down the Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).
... See More + The focus is on the risks of climate change to development. While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the climate change repercussions for human well-being. The report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report (2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that focused on the consequences of climate change for present day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early onset impacts at lower levels of warming.
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This third report in the Turn Down the Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).
... See More + The focus is on the risks of climate change to development. While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the climate change repercussions for human well-being. The report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report (2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that focused on the consequences of climate change for present day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early onset impacts at lower levels of warming.
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This third report in the Turn Down the Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).
... See More + The focus is on the risks of climate change to development. While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the climate change repercussions for human well-being. The report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report (2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that focused on the consequences of climate change for present day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early onset impacts at lower levels of warming.
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This third report in the Turn Down the Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).
... See More + The focus is on the risks of climate change to development. While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the climate change repercussions for human well-being. The report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report (2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that focused on the consequences of climate change for present day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early onset impacts at lower levels of warming.
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