You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
None
In the past decade, fintech has shaken up the financial sector in Latin America providing innovations in lending, payments, insurance, and regulation and compliance. This paper examines this development by focusing on both fintech services and regulation. Exploring fintech’s macro-critical impact using country- and bank-level data, we find that booming financial technologies in Latin America have helped boost competition in the banking sector and inclusion. Additionally, we demonstrate that fintech firms in Latin America experienced robust growth even during the pandemic supported by external funding. Finally, we discuss how regulators are addressing the risks associated with financial technologies and how they are leveraging fintech tools in their supervisory activities.
With ECCU economies slowly emerging from the pandemic with scars, the impact of the war in Ukraine is a setback to the nascent recovery. Higher food and energy prices, amid ongoing supply disruptions and intra-regional transportation bottlenecks, are raising inflation, eroding income, lowering output growth, worsening fiscal and external positions, and threatening food and energy security. As a result, inflation is expected to hover over 51⁄2 percent in 2022. Real GDP is projected to grow by 71⁄2 percent in 2022, leaving output still well below the pre-pandemic level. Fiscal deficits are projected to remain sizable, given continued pandemic- and disaster-related spending and temporary su...
In every age, science and technology have advanced human civilization. From architecture to engineering, medicine to transportation, humans have invented extraordinary wonders. Transportation technology has seen significant changes over the centuries. Ancient people traveled on foot and on the backs of animals. People invented wheels and sailing ships, which helped them travel farther and carry larger loads. Fast forward to modern cars, subways, and airplanes and we’ll find that even the sky’s not the limit. In the twenty-first century, people are planning tourist flights into space. In this book, we’ll explore seven wonders of transportation. These wonders include roads and mass transit systems, including the ancient Silk Road, the London Underground, and the U.S. Interstate Highway System. The wonders also include vehicles such as bicycles, airplanes, spaceships, and the glorious ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II. The newest vehicles are “supergreen” cars, which save energy and help the environment. From the basic to the cutting edge, we’ll learn where transportation has been and where it’s headed.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Belize grew faster than its regional peers. By the mid-2000s, however, economic growth had slowed down to the regional average. A vicious circle of low growth and increasing public debt has been clouding Belize’s outlook. This paper applies a growth diagnostic approach based on the Hausmann-Rodrik-Velasco framework to investigate the main growth constraints and opportunities for higher growth in Belize. Improvements in access to finance and in the business climate could unlock Belize’s strengths.
Since 1980, income levels in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have shown no convergence with those in the US, in stark contrast to emerging Asia and emerging Europe, which have seen rapid convergence. A key factor contributing to this divergence has been sluggish productivity growth in LAC. Low productivity growth has been broad-based across industries and firms in the formal sector, with limited diffusion of technology being an important contributing factor. Digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) hold significant potential to enhance productivity in the formal sector, foster its expansion, reduce informality, and facilitate LAC’s convergence with advanced economies. However, there is a risk that the region will fall behind advanced countries and frontier emerging markets in AI adoption. To capitalize on the benefits of AI, policies should aim to facilitate technological diffusion and job transition.
Is there a one-size-fits-all approach to inclusive growth? We look at four key case studies across advanced and emerging markets—the Nordics, India, Brazil, and Egypt—to try to answer this question. We highlight qualitatively in these countries the key components of inclusive growth models, outcomes from these models, and the road ahead in the respective countries. Some of the analysis focuses on co-operative labor markets in the Nordics, direct benefit transfers in India, the role of social assistance and commodity boom in Brazil, and the inequality puzzle in Egypt. The paper finds that there is a lack of homogeneity among the approaches by these countries and identifies the need for customized solutions to inclusive growth. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t seem to work. The more customized the inclusive growth model, the better the overall outcome.
This paper focuses on Barbados’ Third Review Under the Extended Arrangement, Requests for Augmentation of Access, and Modification of Performance Criteria. Barbados continues its strong implementation of the comprehensive Economic Recovery and Transformation plan aimed at restoring fiscal and debt sustainability and increasing reserves and growth. The ongoing global coronavirus pandemic poses a major challenge for the economy, which is heavily dependent on tourism, and is expected to have a large impact on the balance of payments and the fiscal accounts. State-owned enterprise (SOE) reform remains an essential element of Barbados’ economic program. In order to secure fiscal space for inv...
This paper investigates factors that predict variation in digital and non-digital remittance fees over time and across countries, exploring differences between CAPDR and other regions. The paper fills a void in the literature on how country- and corridor-specific factors relate to remittance fees at different levels of digitalization of the transaction mode. It also complements stylized facts and regression analysis with a survey analysis of the CAPDR authorities’ views on the latest developments, possibilities, and risks related to digital remittances with a view to gauging the authorities’ potential role in further reducing the cost of cross-border payments more generally and remittanc...
A post-apocalyptic world sees major private security companies take control of the entire planet. Police work on the sidelines. Governments lack decisionmaking power. Justice is now cruel and vindictive. In all this, Rebeca Molinari, a Cuban girl living in Antwerp, has a recurring dream. As she tries to make sense of it, strange things begin to happen around her. Critics have said: «Milán-Jerez has successfully crafted emotional tension with a well-developed plot where all the characters mesh together in a masterful way—parallel storylines with secondary characters that take centre stage.» Qué Leer