scholarly journals A Global Shock with Idiosyncratic Pains: State-Dependent Debt Limits for LATAM during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan C. Méndez-Vizcaíno ◽  
Nicolás Moreno-Arias

Fiscal sustainability in five of the largest Latin American economies is examined before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, the DSGE model in Bi(2012) and Hürtgen (2020) is used to estimate the Fiscal Limits and Fiscal Spaces for Peru, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil. These estimates advance the empirical literature for Latin America on fiscal sustainability by offering new calculations stemming from a structural framework with alluring novel features: government default on the intensive margin; dynamic Laffer curves; utility-based stochastic discount factor; and a Markov-Switching process for public transfers with an explosive regime. The most notable additions to the existing literature for Latin America are the estimations of entire distributions of public debt limits for various default probabilities and that said limits critically hinge on both current and future states. Results obtained indicate notorious contractions of Fiscal Spaces among all countries during the pandemic, but the sizes of these were very heterogeneous. Countries that in 2019 had positive spaces and got closer to negative spaces in 2020, have since seen deterioration of their sovereign debt ratings or outlooks. Colombia was the only country to lose its positive Fiscal Space and investment grade, thereby joining Brazil, the previously sole member of both groups

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-76
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Davidson

To facilitate a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of the concept of sultanism, this chapter provides a detailed theoretical and empirical literature review. Firstly, it considers the oriental origins of the concept, as applied by Max Weber and others to the Ottoman Empire and a number of South Asian examples. Secondly, it traces the emergence of ‘contemporary sultanism’, as applied by scholars to Latin American regimes from the mid-twentieth century and onwards. Thirdly, it explores the more recent concept of neo-sultanism and the development of a distinct international empirical category of autocratic-authoritarianism which includes: various Latin America regimes; some of the former communist republics of central Asia and Eastern Europe; and a number of regimes in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. Finally, it assesses the need to address the scholarly deficit in applying contemporary sultanism or neo-sultanism to the Middle East, and suggests that the present-day Saudi And UAE regimes may be strong examples.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo A. Cavallo ◽  
Andrew Powell

The year 2020 will be remembered as one of the most challenging in modern history. Latin America and the Caribbean lost 7.4% of GDP, the largest drop on record in a single year. The region is expected to recover in 2021 but faces a hazardous time ahead. Most countries will require some type of adjustment to maintain fiscal sustainability. While the way forward will be challenging, this report not only details the risks but also outlines a set of policies that should help countries realize a stronger recovery, not just to the low growth rates of the pre-pandemic period, but to higher rates of growth that will benefit all, with more efficient public policies, higher productivity in the private sector, and more sustainable economies.


Author(s):  
Alex Augusto Timm Rathke ◽  
Verônica de Fátima Santana

The adoption of IFRS as a unique set of accounting standards is claimed to have the potential to enhance cross-border financial statements comparability, due to a reduction of information costs and information asymmetry. IFRS is a recent issue in Latin America and there is a lack of knowledge about its application in the region, with countries beginning to completely converge to international accounting standards around 2010. This chapter compares the level of earnings management in the first three Latin American IFRS adopters, Brazil, Chile and Peru, considering the periods before and after IFRS adoption. The results show that firms from each country evidence different levels of earnings management before IFRS adoption, and that those differences no longer remain after the adoption of IFRS. The results indicate that IFRS has made financial information more homogeneous and, therefore, enhanced information comparability in Latin America.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Rosemary Cosme Chavez ◽  
Eun Woo Nam

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of school-based interventions to prevent obesity conducted in Latin America and provide suggestions for future prevention efforts in countries of the region. METHODS: Articles published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese between 2000 and 2017 were searched in four online databases (Google Scholar, PubMed, LILACS, and REDALYC). Inclusion criteria were: studies targeting school-aged children and adolescents (6–18 years old), focusing on preventing obesity in a Latin American country using at least one school-based component, reporting at least one obesity-related outcome, comprising controlled or before-and-after design, and including information on intervention components and/or process. RESULTS: Sixteen studies met the inclusion criteria. Most effective interventions (n = 3) had moderate quality and included multi-component school-based programs to promote health education and parental involvement focused on healthy eating and physical activity behaviors. These studies also presented a better study designs, few limitations for execution, and a minimum duration of six months. CONCLUSIONS: Evidence-based prevention experiences are important guides for future strategies implemented in the region. Alongside gender differences, an adequate duration, and the combined use of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, evidence-based prevention should be considered to provide a clearer and deeper understanding of the true effects of school-based interventions.


1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret E. Crahan

Both before and after the 1959 revolution, the Catholic Church in Cuba deviated from the norm in Latin America. This is in large measure due to the unique historical and social experience of Cuba, as well as to the fact that the church remained until the early 1960s largely a missionary outpost of Spain. When the revolution occurred, the Catholic Church was frozen in a pre-Vatican II mold which was reinforced by an exodus of clergy, religious and laity. The economic and diplomatic embargo of Cuba further isolated the church from progressive trends within the international church. Thus, the ferment unleashed by Vatican II (1962–5) and the Latin American Bishops Conference at Medellín, Colombia (1968) had less impact than changes resulting from the Cuban Revolution. As a consequence, the Catholic Church in Cuba entered the 1970s with limited theological and pastoral resources to meet the challenge of a consolidated Marxist/Leninist revolution. As an institution, the Catholic Church in Cuba is, as it was in 1959, the weakest in all of Latin America.


Author(s):  
Gerardo della Paolera ◽  
Alan M. Taylor

ABSTRACTThis paper examines sovereign lending to Latin America and the Caribbean from 1820 to 1913. We examine four waves of capital flows where defaults were followed by a return to market access. In spite of extended default, countries kept promising high returns that attracted international investors again and again: financial autarky thus gave way to eras of high integration to global markets as measured by sovereign risk pricing. We discuss imperfections of the sovereign debt institutional context in the region and discuss a menu of options that some countries used to seek funds in the global financial markets after defaults. The parallel with the modern Latin American and Caribbean sovereign bond market experience is striking.


2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-91
Author(s):  
Hyeryeon Jung ◽  
Yoon Heo

While the investment creationeffect of regional integration agreements has attracted increased attention in recent years, few studies have examined the impact on investment flows to nonmember countries. This paper investigates ***whether evidence exists for diversion of FDI from Latin America to Mexico both before and after NAFTA to examinethe*** impact of regional integration agreements (RIAs) on FDI inflow by conducting simulations based on a gravity model. A cursory observation of recent FDI trends might give rise to such claims of diversion. Over the post-NAFTA period as a whole, this paper finds that Mexico's FDI performance was not significantly different from the Latin American norm. The findings lead us to conclude that there is no evidence of FDI diversion between these two regions. The fact that stock adjustment is completed in Mexico may be one of the reasons that Mexico has not shown expected FDI inflow ratios.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agustín Escobar Latapi

Although the migration – development nexus is widely recognized as a complex one, it is generally thought that there is a relationship between poverty and emigration, and that remittances lessen inequality. On the basis of Latin American and Mexican data, this chapter intends to show that for Mexico, the exchange of migrants for remittances is among the lowest in Latin America, that extreme poor Mexicans don't migrate although the moderately poor do, that remittances have a small, non-significant impact on the most widely used inequality index of all households and a very large one on the inequality index of remittance-receiving households, and finally that, to Mexican households, the opportunity cost of international migration is higher than remittance income. In summary, there is a relationship between poverty and migration (and vice versa), but this relationship is far from linear, and in some respects may be a perverse one for Mexico and for Mexican households.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Yousef M. Aljamal ◽  
Philipp O. Amour

There are some 700,000 Latin Americans of Palestinian origin, living in fourteen countries of South America. In particular, Palestinian diaspora communities have a considerable presence in Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many members of these communities belong to the professional middle classes, a situation which enables them to play a prominent role in the political and economic life of their countries. The article explores the evolving attitudes of Latin American Palestinians towards the issue of Palestinian statehood. It shows the growing involvement of these communities in Palestinian affairs and their contribution in recent years towards the wide recognition of Palestinian rights — including the right to self-determination and statehood — in Latin America. But the political views of members of these communities also differ considerably about the form and substance of a Palestinian statehood and on the issue of a two-states versus one-state solution.


Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner

In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.


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