The objective of this paper is to study the evolution of the incidence and profile of nonstandard workers in selected countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe and Central Asia in the past two decades.
... See More + The analysis of the profile of this group of workers focuses on three key characteristics that could approximate their productivity: education level, labor income, and task content (manual/cognitive or routine/nonroutine) performed by the workers in their occupations. While in Latin America most of the countries show a stable prevalence in recent decades, in Europe and Central Asia there is not any common pattern across countries. In contrast, from the point of view of the profile of nonstable employment, there are several common characteristics among these types of workers across countries, such as improved level of education, performance of more intensive nonroutine cognitive tasks, and higher variance of labor income. The findings suggest that nonstandard workers are a heterogeneous group. The increase in the incidence of nonstandard employment and its heterogeneity generates concern about the lower level of insurance against certain risks that workers face. Therefore, a greater understanding of the trends in the prevalence and characteristics of nonstandard workers is needed to design regulation and policies oriented to these types of workers.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8581 SEP 12, 2018
Despite their importance, data on the structure of bank credit by maturity are scarce. For Latin America and the Caribbean, data are particularly difficult to obtain, as few banks report loan maturity data in commercial data sets such as Bankscope.
... See More + With support from the Association of Supervisors of Banks of the Americas, this study assembled a novel data set on the structure of bank credit allocation in Latin America and the Caribbean covering 21 countries during 2004-14. This paper uses Bankscope and International Financial Statistics data to extended the coverage to more than 100 countries, creating the largest data set so far on credit by maturity. Benchmarking credit structure in Latin America and the Caribbean, the paper finds that the region is financially underdeveloped, because the ratio of short-term credit to gross domestic product is lower than in peers; long-term credit is at par; and consumer and commercial loans are lower. The paper also explores patterns of credit growth through nonparametric regressions. The results indicate that short-term credit grows faster than long-term credit as income grows in low-income countries, but the situation reverses when countries reach high- or middle-income status. Reflecting this trend, the share of mortgage loans rises with income.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8571 AUG 29, 2018
Gutierrez,Eva M.; Karmali,Nadeem M.; Sourrouille,Diego M.Disclosed
A new set of survey questions is used to map governance structures that firms employ to support the successful implementation of transactions. Responses to the questions were collected as part of the Enterprise Surveys in six South American countries.
... See More + Without imposing any a priori model, latent class analysis (LCA) discovers meaningful patterns of governance structures that readily match constructs in the literature. All governance structures use bilateralism. Bilateralism and formal institutions are sometimes complements, but never substitutes. For each firm, LCA provides estimates of the posterior probability that the firm uses each of the discovered governance structures. These estimates can be used by researchers to go further, testing their own hypotheses relevant to Williamson's discriminating alignment agenda using additional data from the Enterprise Surveys or elsewhere. Variations in the effectiveness of different governance structures across countries and across different types of firms and transactions are explored. Regional variation within countries is greater than cross-country variation. Foreign-owned firms, exporters, larger firms, and better-managed ones are more likely to use governance structures that complement bilateralism with use of the legal system or with the help of paid third-parties.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8564 AUG 22, 2018
There is a large and extensive literature examining the strength of agglomeration economies and, more generally, the determinants of spatial variations in productivity for developed countries.
... See More + However, the corresponding literature for developing countries is comparatively scant. This paper contributes to filling this knowledge gap by providing estimates for city productivity premiums and different sources of agglomeration effects for 16 countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region. While two of the countries in our sample -- Brazil and Colombia -- have been considered by the literature, the remaining 14 countries have not been previously analyzed. The paper presents estimates for the region as well as comparable estimates for each country using a harmonized data set with characteristics of individual workers and features of the cities in which the workers live. In addition to examining the strength of agglomeration economies, the roles of human capital externalities and market access in explaining subnational productivity variations are assessed. The paper finds that citywide human capital externalities appear much stronger than agglomeration economies in explaining productivity variation in all the considered countries. There is considerable heterogeneity in the estimated strength of human capital externalities across countries, which could be a reflection of country differences in educational quality.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8560 AUG 20, 2018
About one in four Latin Americans self-identify as Afro-descendants today. They comprise a highly heterogeneous population and are unevenly distributed across the region, but share a common history of displacement and exclusion.
... See More + Despite significant gains over the past decade, Afro-descendants still are overrepresented among the poor and are underrepresented in decision-making positions, both in the private and the public sector. The extent to which Latin America will be able to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity will therefore depend, to a very large degree, on the social inclusion of Afro-descendants. The objective of this study is to deepen the region's empirical understanding of the drivers behind the persistent exclusion of the afro-descendants, as a first step to design appropriate solutions. The report proposes a framework to organize and think of the myriad options available to address their situations, based on the experience accumulated by the region and the data available.
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About one in four Latin Americans self-identify as Afro-descendants today. They comprise a highly heterogeneous population and are unevenly distributed across the region, but share a common history of displacement and exclusion.
... See More + Despite significant gains over the past decade, Afro-descendants still are overrepresented among the poor and are underrepresented in decision-making positions, both in the private and the public sector. The extent to which Latin America will be able to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity will therefore depend, to a very large degree, on the social inclusion of Afro-descendants. The objective of this study is to deepen the region's empirical understanding of the drivers behind the persistent exclusion of the afro-descendants, as a first step to design appropriate solutions. The report proposes a framework to organize and think of the myriad options available to address their situations, based on the experience accumulated by the region and the data available.
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This paper examines the impact of the quality of the business environment as well as the monitoring capacity of the tax agency on firms' tax evasion and production decisions.
... See More + First, the paper uses firm-level data for 30 African and Latin American countries to show that tax evasion and distortions stemming from the business environment are positively and significantly correlated, while sales not reported for tax purposes and institutional quality are negatively and significantly correlated. Second, the paper develops a general equilibrium model where heterogeneous firms make tax evasion decisions based on their assessment of the quality of their business environment as well as the monitoring capacity of the tax agency. The model simulations for each country in the African and Latin American sample show that the model can explain 35 percent of the variation in tax evasion and more than 49 percent of the dispersion in output per worker across the sample countries. Finally, a series of counterfactual experiments shows that, at the current level of deterrence, governments could decrease sales not reported for tax purposes by 21 percent, by reducing distortions stemming from the business environment by half. The paper presents empirical supporting evidence consistent with testable predictions of the model.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8522 JUL 11, 2018
This paper explores the effect of market orientation on (known) natural resource wealth using a novel dataset of world-wide major hydrocarbon and mineral discoveries.
... See More + Consistent with the predictions of a two-region model, the empirical estimates based on a large panel of countries show that increased market orientation causes a significant increase in discoveries of natural resources. In a thought experiment whereby economies in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa remained closed, they would have only achieved one quarter of the actual increase in discoveries they have experienced since the early 1990s. The results call into question the commonly held view that natural resource endowments are exogenous.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8520 JUL 11, 2018
Arezki,Rabah; van der Ploeg,Frederick; Toscani,FrederikDisclosed
Despite a substantial improvement in controlling new infections of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) over the last ten years, Mexico is experiencing a low-level epidemic with approximately 180,000 people living with HIV (Spectrum, 2013), making it the fourth ranking country in Latin America with regards to the number of people with the disease (PLHIV).
... See More + The objective of increasing coverage and reducing inequality in the country is reflected in the objectives of the Specific Action Program (PAE) for the national response to HIV, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and Sexually transmitted infection (STI) of 2013-2018 (Secretaria de salud), which seeks to decrease the effect of HIV and STIs, implement prevention strategies and provide comprehensive care for vulnerable population groups and those living in poverty. The possibility of achieving the objectives of the PAE is closely related to the total amount of resources that Mexico can commit to fighting HIV and the way these resources are allocated. In the hopes of assisting the government of Mexico in further strengthening its HIV investment, the authors try to answer the question “How can HIV funding be optimally allocated to the combination of HIV response interventions that will yield the highest impact in the shortest period”. The study found that despite the overall greater costs of treatment with Antiretroviral therapy (ART), this is the most cost-effective program. ART not only reduces deaths but is an effective measure to prevent new infections due to the reduction of viral load to undetectable levels. As such, the most cost-effective allocation – with no additional resources of current Program funds, is to scale up treatment, by about 4 to 8 percent, to maximize ART coverage while slightly reducing overall allocations to general population prevention.
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The development objective of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) Capacity Building on Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)+ for Indigenous Peoples in Latin America Project is to strengthen: (a) targeted forest-dependent indigenous peoples' knowledge of REDD+ readiness at the national level, and (b) related knowledge exchange at the regional level in eligible FCPF countries in Central and South America.
... See More + The restructuring will bring following changes: (i) change in results framework; (ii) change in components and cost; (iii) change in closing date to June 30, 2020 to accommodate the additional activities financed by the additional financing (AF); (iv) AF grant from the parent FCPF trust fund; (v) change in disbursement estimates; (vi) changes in the financing agreement; and (vii) changes in procurement.
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Poverty reduction in the Latin America (LA) region remained stagnant in 2016 as the economic contraction deepened, while the middle class has slightly declined.
... See More + Poverty rates were once again effectively unchanged for half the countries. Income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the Latin American income distribution was negative in both 2015 and 2016, driven by Brazil, but overall inequality decreased due to larger income declines among wealthier households. Preliminary data are ambiguous over the likely poverty outcomes in 2017. Non-labor income will need to play an important role given the low labor income increases seen in preliminary labor market data.
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The development objective of Forest Carbon Partnership Facility Capacity Building on REDD+ for Civil Society and Local Communities Project is to strengthen: (i) the knowledge of targeted civil society organizations and local communities of REDD+ Readiness at the national level, and (ii) related knowledge exchange at the regional level in eligible FCPF countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
... See More + This restructuring requires the following changes: (i) change in results framework; (ii) change in components and cost; (iii) additional financing (AF) proposed; (iv) ) closing date of the project will be extended by 24 months from June 30, 2018, to June 30, 2020, to accommodate the additional activities financed by the AF; (v) change in disbursement estimates; (vi) changes in the financing agreement; and (vii) changes in procurement.
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