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on Central and South America |
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Issue of 2015‒06‒13
ten papers chosen by |
| By: | Irene Brambilla (UNLP and CONICET); Darío Tortarolo (CEDLAS-UNLP) |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to characterize the evolution of labor earnings in Latin America during the 2000s, a decade of markedly poverty reduction. Based on household surveys for six countries, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras and Mexico, we study clusters of increases in labor earnings across worker, job, and industry characteristics. Throughout the analysis we allow for worker income heterogeneity, so as to characterize the evolution of labor earnings across the income distribution. For three of the six countries, we match the household survey data with industrial data from UNIDO and COMTRADE and find that increases in productivity and changes in product composition are more important than industry output as determinants of increases in labor earnings within manufacturing. |
| Date: | 2015–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0182&r=lam |
| By: | Leonardo Gasparini (CEDLAS - UNLP); Mariana Marchionni (CEDLAS - UNLP) |
| Abstract: | This book contributes to the understanding of female labor force participation in Latin America by documenting the changes that took place over the last two decades, exploring their determinants, analyzing their consequences on labor and social outcomes, and discussing implications for public policy. The book highlights a potentially worrisome finding: after around half a century of sustained growth, there are signs of a widespread and significant deceleration in the entry of women into the Latin American labor markets. A version of this paper will be published as Chapter 1 of Gasparini and Marchionni (eds.) (2015). Bridging gender gaps? The rise and deceleration of female labor force participation in Latin America. |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0185&r=lam |
| By: | Mandakovic Vesna; María Teresa Lepelev; Olga Pizarro (School of Business and Economics, Universidad del Desarrollo) |
| Abstract: | This study is framed on a global vision of women participation in entrepreneurial activity as an introductory note and proceeds with a comprehensive assessment of the experience of women entrepreneurs in Chile in the last thirty years. Chile is one of the fastest growing and most stable economies in Latin America and among developing countries with a 5.7 percent unemployment and 14.8 percent poverty level. This case study is focused on Chilean women entrepreneurs from a business sustainability dimension, providing the experience of a pioneer country that introduced entrepreneurship as a central economic development strategy since the late seventies. |
| Keywords: | Women Entrepreneurs,innovation, business sustainability, economies, América Latina, Chile. |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dsr:wpaper:14&r=lam |
| By: | Giovanni Andrea Cornia |
| Abstract: | The paper reviews the extent of the income inequality decline that took place in Latin America in 2002-10 and then focuses on the factors that may explain such decline. These include a lowered skill premium following an expansion of secondary education among the poor, and the adoption of more equalizing tax, labour market subsidies and macro policies by a growing number of progressive governments. Finally, the paper reviews the changes in inequality during 2009-12 and discusses whether and how the recent decline can be sustained over the next decade in the context of sluggish world growth. |
| Keywords: | Education, Equality and inequality, Fiscal policy, History, Local, Income distribution |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2015-020&r=lam |
| By: | Calero, Carla; Gonzales, Veronica; Soares, Yuri; Kluve, Jochen; Corseuil, Carlos Henrique |
| Abstract: | This paper provides findings of a small-scale, innovative labor training program that uses expressive arts and theatre as a pedagogical tool. The corresponding life skills training component is combined with a technical component teaching vocational skills. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of a training program constructed around expressive arts. Using a randomized assignment of favela youth into program and control groups, we look at the short-run treatment effects on a comprehensive set of outcomes including employment and earnings as well as measures of personality traits and risk behavior. We find positive short-run employment and earnings impacts five months after the program finalized; no impacts are found for shorter periods. These short-run impacts are economically very large, compared to those typically found in the literature: a 33.3 per cent increase in the probability of being employed, and a 23.6 per cent increase in earnings. We find no evidence of significant program impacts on other outcomes, including personality-related traits, providing evidence that these traits may not be malleable for young adults in the short-run. We argue that the estimated labor market impacts are due to a combination of both skills formation and signaling of higher quality workers to employers. |
| Keywords: | labor market training,youths,randomized controlled trial,life skills |
| JEL: | J24 J68 I38 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:486&r=lam |
| By: | David Coble; Sebastián Faúndez |
| Abstract: | Recent studies have documented the importance of the labor wedge in accounting for the level of business cycle fluctuations in Chile. None of these papers, however, extensively studies the labor wedge fluctuations and its possible sources. This paper takes a closer look at the labor wedge in Chile, with special emphasis on its cyclicality. We use a flexible model to implicitly derive the Frisch elasticity of labor, and construct a set of labor wedges. We find that the labor wedge in Chile is counter-cyclical. Finally, we show that the labor wedge can be written as the sum of two components: the firm's and the household's. We find that household component is the main driver of Chilean labor market fluctuations. |
| Date: | 2015–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chb:bcchwp:758&r=lam |
| By: | Luz Andrea Piñeros López; Andrés Mauricio Clavijo Abril |
| Keywords: | Subjective poverty, living conditions, multidimensional poverty index, food security and poverty measurements. |
| Date: | 2014–12–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000482:012989&r=lam |
| By: | Mandakovic Vesna; Gonzalo Jiménez; Verónica Arriagada; Cristián Echeverría (School of Business and Economics, Universidad del Desarrollo) |
| Abstract: | La presente investigación buscar salvar la brecha de información existente en cuánto al conocimiento de la empresa familiar en Chile, permitiendo su mayor inclusión en el debate público y contribuyendo al creciente interés internacional asociado a la relación entre empresa familiar y políticas públicas (Durenberger, 2009; Craig & Moores, 2010; European Commission, 2011; Kamei & Dana, 2012; Hamid & Fuad, 2013). |
| Keywords: | empresa familiar, políticas públicas, empleo, emprendimiento, inversión. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dsr:wpaper:13&r=lam |
| By: | Nazar van Doornik, B.F. (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management) |
| Abstract: | The thesis consists of three chapters that study the behavior of foreign banks in Brazil. The first chapter explores the Brazilian macro-prudential measures of the end of 2010 in a quasi-natural experiment to unfold the lending behavior of foreign banks. The second chapter evaluates the extent to which the international financial crisis that started in August 2007 induced more affected banks to act in a more pessimistic way on the creditworthiness of their commercial borrowers. The third chapter analyses how the strengthening of creditor rights affected corporate debt structure, collateral liquidity and collateralization rate, following the 2005 bankruptcy law in Brazil. |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiutis:06586714-3b67-4f84-be4f-39e127b0f6c7&r=lam |
| By: | Sebastian Galiani; Ivan Torre; Gustavo Torrens |
| Abstract: | Different countries have been following different reform paths since the early 1990s. We develop a simple dynamic model of policy reform that captures some of the determinants that underlie these differences. The model emphasizes the interaction between domestic institutions and international organizations that promote reform, on the one hand, and the political incentives for reversing reforms, on the other. At equilibrium, there are three types of reform paths. A country can undergo a full-scale, lasting reform; it can undertake a partial but lasting reform; or it can go through cycles of reforms and costly counter-reforms. Domestic institutions, as well as the incentives provided by international organizations, determine the equilibrium path. Unless the cost of reversal is high enough, an international intervention that promotes reforms induces an increase in the probability of reversals. A benevolent international organization that is fully aware of the possibility and social cost of reversals will always increase social welfare if it embraces the following principle: promote the greatest partial reform that is compatible with no reversal, or induce cycles of full-scale reform and complete reversal, depending on which of those two paths will generate greater social welfare. A benevolent but politically myopic international organization, however, may reduce social welfare because it does not take the fact into account that an overly aggressive reform could trigger costly reversals that outweigh the benefits of the reform. Deliberately making the costs of reversal high could be a risky way of improving the trade-off between the extent of the reform and the probability of reversal. Our model suggests that international organizations should also consider the possibility of providing defensive funding for dealing with counter-reform shocks. |
| JEL: | D72 F53 |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21237&r=lam |