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After decades of stagnation, the size of Latin America's middle class recently expanded to the point where, for the first time ever, the number of people in poverty is equal to the size of the middle class. This volume investigates the nature, determinants and possible consequences of this remarkable process of social transformation. We propose an original definition of the middle class, tailor-made for Latin America, centered on the concept of economic security and thus a low probability of falling into poverty. Given our definition of the middle class, there are four, not three, classes in Latin America. Sandwiched between the poor and the middle class there lies a large group of people wh...
Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space ...
"The rise in global conflict, dramatic technological breakthroughs, and the floundering of traditional law and economics has precipitated a reexamination of the fundamentals of law and economics. This volume focuses on the new challenges arising from globalization, technological advance, and the social and political conflicts to which they give rise. Its contributors mull over the challenges of this new world and how we can steer a course giving individuals the space and freedom to work, innovate, earn, profit and prosper, and the state the wisdom to regulate and ensure that conflicts do not occur, externalities are managed, and some are not marginalized and impoverished, while others accumulate and prosper."--Provided by publisher.
A Brookings Institution Press and United Nations Development Programme publication Latin America is often singled out for its high and persistent income inequality. Toward the end of the 1990s, however, income concentration began to fall across the region. Of the seventeen countries for which comparable data are available, twelve have experienced a decline, particularly since 2000. This book is among the first efforts to understand what happened in these countries and why. Led by editors Felipe López-Calva and Nora Lustig, a panel of distinguished economists undertakes in-depth analyses of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru. In addition, they provide essential background in the form of ove...
Ben Ross Schneider's volume, New Order and Progress takes a thorough look at the political economy of Brazil. The distinctive perspective of the 11 chapters is historical, comparative, and theoretical. Collectively, the chapters offer sobering insight into why Brazil has not been the rising economic star of the BRIC that many predicted it would be, but also documents the gains that Brazil has made toward greater equality and stability. The book is grouped into four parts covering Brazil's development strategy, governance, social change, and political representation. The authors -18 leading experts from Brazil and the United States - analyze core issues in Brazil's evolving political economy, including falling inequality, the new middle class, equalizing federalism, the politicization of the federal bureaucracy, resurgent state capitalism, labor market discrimination, survival of political dynasties, the expansion of suffrage, oil and the resource curse, exchange rates and capital controls, protest movements, and the frayed social contract.
This book examines the role of tax policy in the incidence of socio-economic inequality. With a focus on Latin American, the author demonstrates that while inequality has decreased remarkably in the last decade – during the very period in which inequality was increasing almost everywhere else in the world – this reduction cannot be attributed to a better use of tax policy. Offering both quantitative and qualitative reviews of tax policies pursued by Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru over the last two decades, Reducing Inequality in Latin America contends that these countries continue to make insufficient use taxation measures in combating startlingly high levels of inequality. ...
Abstract: "The authors use panel data for Mexico for 1997 to 1999 to test several assumptions regarding the impact of a conditional cash transfer program on child labor, emphasizing the differential impact on indigenous households. Using data from the conditional cash transfer program in Mexico--PROGRESA (OPORTUNIDADES)--they investigate the interaction between child labor and indigenous households. While indigenous children had a greater probability of working in 1997, this probability is reversed after treatment in the program. Indigenous children also had lower school attainment compared with Spanish-speaking or bilingual children. After the program, school attainment among indigenous children increased, reducing the gap. This paper--a product of the Education Sector Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region--is part of a larger effort in the region to evaluate human development programs"--World Bank web site.
This semiannual journal from the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) provides a forum for influential economists and policymakers to share high-quality research directly applied to policy issues within and among those countries. Contents include: The Economics of Latin American Art: Creativity Patterns and Rates of Return Sebastian Edwards (UCLA) Privatization in Latin America: What Does the Evidence Say? Alberto Chong (IADB) and Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes (Yale University) Multinationals and Linkages: An Empirical Investigation Laura Alfaro (Harvard Business School) and Andres Rodriguez-Clare (IADB) On the Consequences of Sudden Stops Pablo E. Guidotti (Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Argentina), Federico Sturzenegger (Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Argentina), and Agustin Villar (Bank for International Settlements) Effects of Foreign Exchange Intervention under Public Information: The Chilean Case Matias Tapia (Canco Central de Chile) and Andrea Tokman (Banco Central de Chile)
Latin America has been one of the critical areas in the study of comparative politics. The region’s experiments with installing and deepening democracy and promoting alternative modes of economic development have generated intriguing and enduring empirical puzzles. In turn, Latin America’s challenges continue to spawn original and vital work on central questions in comparative politics: about the origins of democracy; about the relationship between state and society; about the nature of citizenship; about the balance between state and market. The richness and diversity of the study of Latin American politics makes it hard to stay abreast of the developments in the many sub-literatures of the field. The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Politics offers an intellectually rigorous overview of the state of the field and a thoughtful guide to the direction of future scholarship. Kingstone and Yashar bring together the leading figures in the study of Latin America to present extensive empirical coverage, new original research, and a cutting-edge examination of the central areas of inquiry in the region.
Global California analyzes how the residents of the largest and most internationally connected of the fifty American states are affected by world trends, and recommends what they can do to enhance the benefits and mitigate the costs of global engagement.