nep-lam New Economics Papers
on Central and South America
Issue of 2022‒11‒21
three papers chosen by



  1. How do firms innovate in Latin America? By Vargas, Fernando
  2. COVID-19 and Gender Differences in the Labor Market: Evidence from the Peruvian Economy By Giannina Vaccaro; Tania Paredes
  3. Learning Poverty : Measures and Simulations By Azevedo,Joao Pedro Wagner De

  1. By: Vargas, Fernando
    Abstract: The study of innovation in Latin American firms has concentrated almost exclusively on the determinants and impacts of innovation investments and outputs. Less attention has been paid to how firms innovate. This study applies factor and cluster analysis to a unique dataset of harmonized innovation surveys from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, to identify the main innovation practices and strategies performed by Latin American firms. Three of the four identified innovation strategies can be linked to results from similar studies using European firm-level data. However, none of these strategies resembles a strong science or research orientation. An approach to "open management" innovation emerges as idiosyncratic for Latin American firms. These innovation strategies are associated with differences in sales growth and labor productivity. The analysis also shows that firm resources and capabilities drive innovation strategy selection.
    JEL: L20 O12 O14 O30 O32 O33 O54
    Date: 2022–05–23
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2022018&r=lam
  2. By: Giannina Vaccaro (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.); Tania Paredes (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.)
    Abstract: The COVID-19 and its confinement measures have generated a severe economic contraction around the world. However, there is still no consensus on the magnitude of its immediate effects, particularly in developing countries. Analysts have emphasized not only human capital losses but also an economic recession and increase in economic and social inequalities, including gender differences. Despite the Latin America (LA) countries are most affected in terms of deaths, most studies focus on the impact of COVID19 on developed countries. Using data from the National Household Surveys (ENAHO) from 2019-2021, we studied the impact of the COVID-19’S confinement measures on gender differences in the labor market in Peru, country with one of the biggest death rates. We found that the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdown measures accentuated gender inequality in labor market. Women have largely decreased the total hours worked than men, particularly due to the reduction of formal employment. More vulnerable women are low-skilled and those who have not worked remotely. JEL Classification-JE: J01 , J02 , J22 , O17.
    Keywords: COVID-19, employment, gender differences, impact analysis, Peru.
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pcp:pucwps:wp00515&r=lam
  3. By: Azevedo,Joao Pedro Wagner De
    Abstract: COVID-19-related school closures are pushing countries off track from achieving their learning goals. This paper builds on the concept of learning poverty and draws on axiomatic properties from social choice literature to propose and motivate a distribution-sensitive measures of learning poverty. Numerical, empirical, and practical reasons for the relevance and usefulness of these complementary inequality sensitive aggregations for simulating the effects of COVID-19 are presented. In a post-COVID-19 scenario of no remediation and low mitigation effectiveness for the effects of school closures, the simulations show that learning poverty increases from 53 to 63 percent. Most of this increase seems to occur in lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries, especially in East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, and South Asia. The countries that had the highest levels of learning poverty before COVID-19 (predominantly in Africa and the low-income country group) might have the smallest absolute and relative increases in learning poverty, reflecting how great the learning crisis was in those countries before the pandemic. Measures of learning poverty and learning deprivation sensitive to changes in distribution, such as gap and severity measures, show differences in learning loss regional rankings. Africa stands to lose the most. Countries with higher inequality among the learning poor, as captured by the proposed learning poverty severity measure, would need far greater adaptability to respond to broader differences in student needs.
    Keywords: null
    Date: 2020–10–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9446&r=lam

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