|
on Central and South America |
| By: | Manzano, Andrea (IHE - The Swedish Institute for Health Economics); Hofmarcher, Thomas (IHE - The Swedish Institute for Health Economics) |
| Abstract: | Breast cancer is a major and growing public health concern in Latin America. One of the most aggressive and challenging subtypes of breast cancer is triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), accounting for 13–21% of all breast cancer cases. <p> This report is an extension of IHE Report 2023:6. It covers three new countries – Dominican Republic, Panama, and Peru – in addition to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. It takes a closer look at challenges and opportunities to improve the care of TNBC in Latin America. <p> TNBC is often diagnosed at a late stage when survival chances are low. Early detection – through self-detection and screening – is vital to improve the chance of survival. Current challenges for early detection of TNBC in Latin America include: <p> • Low awareness of early signs of breast cancer and fear of diagnosis among women <p> • Low participation or absence of organized population-based screening programs <p> • Low perceived quality of primary care and screening services in the public sector <p> TNBC is the most difficult-to-treat subtype of breast cancer irrespective of stage at diagnosis. <p> The recent introduction of immunotherapy and targeted therapy (for patients with BRCA mutations) is currently changing the treatment landscape. Timely breast diagnostics and appropriate treatment are imperative to increase the survival chances of patients. Current challenges in the areas of diagnostics and treatment of TNBC in Latin America include: <p> • Poor coordination between providers of diagnostic services and treatment in the public sector <p> • Shortages of specialized physicians, such as pathologists, oncologists, radiologists <p> • Lack of diagnostic infrastructure and comprehensive biomarker testing <p> • Lack of availability of new treatments in the public sector and slow adoption of new treatment approaches in clinical practice <p> Broad recommendations to improve the care of TNBC patients in Latin America include efforts to raise health literacy to facilitate early detection, ensure optimal care delivery along the entire patient pathway, and adoption of innovation in clinical practice. Improving the quality of care – from early detection to diagnostics and treatment – has wider positive implications for society, including effects on health systems, work life, family life, the need for informal care, and the economy. |
| Keywords: | Breast cancer; TNBC; screening; medicines; immunotherapy; BRCA; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Colombia; Dominican Republic; Mexico; Panama; Peru |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ihewps:2024_004 |
| By: | Giraldo, Carlos (Latin American Reserve Fund); Giraldo, Iader (Latin American Reserve Fund); Gomez-Gonzalez, Jose E. (City University of New York – Lehman College); Uribe, Jorge M. (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the relationship between depreciation and default risks in five key Latin American markets—Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico—in response to shifts in the US yield curve slope. Excluding serial defaulters like Argentina, our focus lies on countries still susceptible to the Twin Ds phenomenon amidst high debt levels. We find that global economic spillovers significantly influence the Twin Ds in these markets; with fluctuations in the US term spread serving as an indicator of broader shifts in global economic conditions. Our analysis reveals asymmetric spillover effects, particularly during periods of positive and increasing spreads such as the Global Financial Crisis, where changes in the term spread disproportionately impact the depreciation tail in currency markets and the high-risk tail in sovereign CDS markets. Notably, such effects are absent in stock markets, which accentuate the particular dynamics of currency and sovereign debt markets. The asymmetry of spillover effects, although still present during the most recent Covid-19 crisis, was less pronounced, which may be linked to the accumulation of international FX reserves in the region during the last decades. Our findings emphasize the necessity of incorporating risk spillovers into policy frameworks, highlighting the dominance of risk spillovers over price spillovers and the obscured nature of shocks at the center of the variables’ distribution. |
| Keywords: | Risk spillovers; Price spillovers; US term spread; Twin Ds; Emerging markets |
| JEL: | E43 F34 G01 |
| Date: | 2024–07–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000566:021169 |
| By: | OECD |
| Abstract: | Fighting poverty remains a top priority and a key challenge to many countries including in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Although LAC countries have strengthened their competition policy in the past decade, poverty has increased in the region, mostly as effect of the recession which followed the Covid-19 pandemic. Given these factual circumstances, it seems relevant to address the role of competition policy in poverty reduction, including the question on how competition authorities can contribute to fighting poverty. This background note highlights the main issues regarding the role competition authorities can play in fighting poverty. For this purpose, it presents the interplay between competition policy and poverty reduction, then focuses on the role of competition authorities from both the enforcement and the advocacy perspectives. The final remarks point that competition authorities may help a broader policy to reduce poverty, particularly by prioritising its work to markets that have a greater impact on the poorest (e.g. markets of essential goods and services).This note was prepared as a background note for a discussion held on the topic during the 2023 OECD-IDB Latin American and Caribbean Competition Forum held in September 2023 in Ecuador. |
| Date: | 2023–05–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:dafaac:292-en |
| By: | Maria Laura Miranda (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Cássio M. Turra; Ugofilippo Basellini (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased mortality rates, disrupting historical trends and making it challenging to forecast future life expectancy levels. São Paulo, the first city in Brazil to report a COVID-19 case and death saw a decrease of over four years in life expectancy at birth for males and over three years for females between 2019 and 2021. São Paulo has been at the forefront of the demographic transition in the country and experienced a nonlinear mortality decline over the 20th century. The city's historical mortality trajectory and the disruptive effects of COVID-19 have introduced challenges to mortality forecasting. In this study, we used a unique dataset starting from 1920 to forecast life expectancy in São Paulo until 2050 using the Lee-Carter (LC) and Lee-Miller (LM) methods. Mortality rates were obtained from a combination of deaths gathered by the SEADE Foundation (SEADE) and population collected by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). To mitigate the dependency on the fitting period's choice and better incorporate the effects of the recent mortality shock, we used different baseline periods, using all years from 1920 to 1995 as the starting year of the analysis and six scenarios for post-pandemic mortality levels. Additionally, we used a simulation approach for the time-index parameter to calculate prediction intervals. Based on 73, 200 simulations for each year between 2023 and 2050, we synthesized the resulting life expectancy forecasts into median values and 95% prediction intervals (PI). By 2050, we predict that life expectancy at birth in São Paulo will reach approximately 81.5 years for men and 88.3 years for women. Also, within the 95% PI, we estimated that by 2045, male life expectancy could reach the levels of best-performing countries. Our approach is among the first attempts to forecast mortality in the presence of shocks. Additionally, by evaluating different baseline periods, we advocate for the adoption of more accurate forecasting strategies, particularly in contexts of recent mortality decline. These findings provide valuable resources for policymakers and researchers working to address public health challenges arising from the pandemic and plan for the future well-being of many populations. |
| Keywords: | Brazil |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2024-017 |
| By: | Alejandro Fiorito (Economist, Johns Hopkins University); José Juan Ruiz (Chairman, Elcano Royal Institute); Ernesto Talvi (Senior Analyst, Elcano Royal Institute) |
| Abstract: | A widespread notion in European capitals is that Latin America is an economic failure: a highly volatile region, prone to all kind of recurrent crises, and unable to develop and sustain a dynamic of convergence towards the income levels of advanced economies, as the Asian Tigers did. To paraphrase a well-known saying about Brazil, the established perception is that “Latin America is a land of the future and it always will be.” Data shows this view is biased and does not match reality. First, progress in macroeconomic management over the last 20 years has been very significant and the results are notable. An entire Latin American generation has grown up in an environment of low and relatively stable inflation, reasonably sound public finances, and regulatory and supervisory frameworks that have led to the strong financial systems the region has today. One striking achievement is the reduction in the frequency of exchange rate, sovereign debt, and financial crises: from an average of four crises per year between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s to less than one a year in the last 20 years. As a result of this greater macroeconomic stability, Latin America went from being a protagonist—one third of the world’s exchange rate, banking, and debt crises between 1974 and 2003 took place in the region—to just playing a supporting role: only one of every six crises have taken place in Latin America since 2003. Second, income convergence from underdevelopment to development is the exception that proves the rule, as non-convergence is a widespread phenomenon in most emerging markets and developing economies. To judge Latin America’s long-term performance by comparing it with the highly unlikely convergence processes only achieved by Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong in the post-war period is, to say the least, incorrect. The main challenge that Latin America faces is neither macroeconomic management nor trying to achieve the unlikely goal of convergence but consolidating sustainable and inclusive growth. The region’s per capita income has been stagnant for a decade. The prolonged absence of sustained economic growth inevitably results in a situation marked by a distributive competition for resources, which not only fosters social tensions but also diverts valuable sociopolitical resources towards managing these tensions, instead of focusing them on the pursuit of economic growth. |
| Date: | 2024–06–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:697 |
| By: | Leal, Alan (Departamento de Economia, Universidade de São Paulo); Haddad, Eduardo (Departamento de Economia, Universidade de São Paulo) |
| Abstract: | Contingent free trade agreements are an instrument of interaction between countries that is being used more recently. In this paper, we consider the European Union-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement and how this FTA can be used by EU to induce certain land use changes in Brazil. This analysis uses a quantitative trade model and different trade arrangements to test whether these conditional trade agreements accomplish what they originally intend. We find that in the case of the EU-Mercosur FTA, Brazilian Legal Amazon states tend to alternate at seeing reduction of land use. However, for the kinds of trade arrangement, among the ones considered in this paper, welfare seems to increase state-wide. This indicates that even if Brazil concede entering in non-totally free trade agreements, there are trade gains to be obtained. Internally to Brazil, nevertheless, a contingent free trade agreement might create some political instability for the country. Our paper aims to anticipate this political discussion by bringing to the front the fact the any kind of trade agreement will benefit states differently. |
| Keywords: | trade; land use; quantitative spatial model |
| JEL: | F10 |
| Date: | 2024–07–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:nereus:2024_004 |
| By: | Giraldo, Carlos (Latin American Reserve Fund); Giraldo, Iader (Latin American Reserve Fund); Gomez-Gonzalez, Jose E. (City University of New York – Lehman College); Uribe, Jorge M. (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) |
| Abstract: | We examine the effect of climate uncertainty shocks on the growth rate distribution of Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1970 to 2022. We provide novel indicators for second-moment shocks (volatility), third-moment shocks (skewness), and fourth-moment shocks (kurtosis) based on daily temperatures at the country level. Our panel quantile models with fixed effects reveal a significant negative impact of time-varying skewness on the lower quantiles of the growth distribution during negative growth periods. Conversely, volatility and kurtosis do not significantly affect growth rates. These findings emphasize the importance of incorporating time-varying climate skewness in economic climate models and highlight the impacts of climate uncertainty shocks across different growth quantiles beyond the traditional effects of the average change in temperature. |
| Keywords: | Climate Uncertainty; Economic Growth; Quantile Regression; Latin America; Caribbean; Temperature Shocks; Growth at Risk; Panel Data; |
| JEL: | C33 E32 O40 Q54 |
| Date: | 2024–07–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000566:021166 |