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41. Preferential Treatment in Trade: Is There Any Room Left in the Americas?

Author:
Fernando Masi
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the costs and benefits of changes brought by the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on special and differential treatment (S); shows how these changes affected the new regional integration processes in the American continent; and examines whether this issue is still a priority of developing countries' agendas. Large concessions offered by developing countries in exchange for access to markets automatically led to “trade graduation.” Thus, S has lost its former significance among developing countries. Moreover, nonreciprocal treatment was retained for least developed countries, which do not even enjoy this type of treatment under the so-called “new trade-related issues” of services, investment, and intellectual property rights.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, and North America

42. Lessons on Sustainable Development from Costa Rica's Forests

Author:
Eduardo Silva
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Costa Rica enjoys a reputation as a peaceful, democratic, and equitable Central American country with a strong commitment to nature protection. Government environmentalism began with a focus on nature preservation during the administration of Daniel Odúber (1974-1978), the presidential father of the national parks system. Under President Oscar Árias (1986-1990), Costa Rica's leaders became aware that responses to the problems of environmental protection versus development required more than the creation of national parks. Since then, they have worked tirelessly to weave the norms and principles of the concept of sustainable development into their nation's policies and institutional framework. Costa Rica's institutional and programmatic innovations have turned it into a laboratory for sustainable development, especially with respect to the forest. It is seen as a leader and pioneer in community forestry, bioprospecting, green taxes, carbon emissions trading, and administrative decentralization in the management of protected areas. As occurs with all trailblazers, Costa Rica's efforts to implement a policy of sustainable development raise a number of questions. What trade-offs have the forest and biodiversity conservation policies of the 1990s generated with respect to the different components of sustainable development? Are the measures adopted likely to be successful? How were those policy choices made? By what means can the components of sustainable development that have been neglected be incorporated, especially those related to livelihood? This paper will address these questions
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Environment
Political Geography:
Central America

43. Moving Beyond Privatization in Latin America: The Government/Business Relationship

Author:
Robert Grosse
Publication Date:
03-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
The outcomes of regulatory policies and regimes in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico since 1990 in the telecommunications, electric power, and banking sectors are explored in this paper. How should governments regulate these oligopolistic industries, once ownership of the sectors has been passed to private hands? How can governments manage these relationships successfully and see that the greatest benefits accrue to the country? What institutional structures can best handle the problems that arise in these situations? The paper addresses these questions and concludes that, while privatizations in these sectors have been predominantly positive in the 1990s, there is still considerable room for more competition.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Latin America, Central America, and Mexico

44. Transcript: World Economic Update III

Author:
Daniel K. Tarullo, John Lipsky, Arturo Porzecanski, and Bruce Steinberg
Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Mr. Daniel K. Tarullo (Linda J. Wachner Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Economic Policy, Council on Foreign Relations): ...(Joined in progress) In the past World Economic Update sessions, we have not paid quite as much attention to Latin America, and in light of recent developments, it seems in need of some attention. We are pleased to have with us this morning three distinguished panelists: to your far right, John Lipsky, the chief economist at Chase Manhattan; sitting next to me, Arturo Porzecanski, the managing director at ING Barings and the Americas chief economist; and then to your far left, Bruce Steinberg, chief economist at Merrill Lynch.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States, Asia, South America, Latin America, Central America, and North America

45. Growth, Poverty and Inequality in Latin America

Author:
William Smith and Roberto Korzeniewicz
Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Latin American and Iberian Studies at Columbia University
Abstract:
The crystallization of the so-called “Washington Consensus” in the late 1980s sparked intense debates regarding the likely social impact of macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment. Academic critics and political opponents argued that Washingtonian reforms, and neoclassical economics more broadly, lacked a coherent theory of growth, and were bound to result in long-term negative trends in popular welfare and social inequality. Advocates of neoliberal restructuring, in contrast, while recognizing that market-oriented reforms could lead initially to a decline in output and standards of living, were confident that these reforms eventually would lead to sustainable growth and, as a consequence, greater equality and enhanced social welfare. A decade later we revisit this debate to evaluate recent trends in economic growth, poverty and inequality, and to assess accompanying shifts in the theoretical, policy, and political terrains.
Topic:
Development and Economics
Political Geography:
Washington, South America, Latin America, Central America, and Caribbean

46. Currency Boards or Dollarization — Solutions or Traps

Author:
John Chown
Publication Date:
08-1999
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Currency boards have been suggested for Russia, and adopted elsewhere in eastern Europe. Brazil's fixed rate has had to be abandoned, but Argentina is considering replacing its currency board with dollarization, and suggesting this solution for the rest of Latin America. Fixed exchange-rate regimes (and the crawling peg in Russia) have collapsed in Southeast Asia but Hong Kong, which had a formal currency board, has (so far) survived.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, and North America

47. Negotiating Economic Transitions in Liberizing Polities

Author:
Frances Hagopian
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
How do governments struggling to consolidate new democracies enact effective stabilization and adjustment policies, reform the public sector, and deregulate markets? And what has been the impact of economic liberalization on political institutions and systems of political representation? Treating economic and political transitions as mutually interdependent, this paper couples these questions to suggest a reformulation of the conventional wisdom about how economic liberalization proceeds and how political interests are determined. It challenges the assumption that neoliberal reform is most readily achieved in liberalizing polities when visionary political leaders surrounded by coherent economic teams with comprehensive programs in place act with a wide margin of autonomy from society. It also questions the contention that structures of political representation are the outgrowth of either economic organization or the product of state engineering. The paper makes two arguments. Its central argument is that economic reform is accomplished most readily when government reformers, acting through available clientelistic, corporatist, and party-based networks of mediation, negotiate the compliance of public and private sector representatives of social actors for the introduction of market-oriented reforms. They trade public resources or legislation favoring the representational status of political or social actors in the present for the agreement of those actors to accept diminished state resources for their organizations or constituents in the future. The use of specific networks of negotiation, moreover, influences the design of liberalization policies and helps to account for national differences in the pace and sequence of economic reform measures. The paper's second argument is that those systems of political representation that are strengthened as a result of the temporary advantages that accrue to them during the process of state retreat will endure even when they are incompatible with economic liberalism. This is so because the politicians and group leaders who manage these networks have the opportunity to design institutions that will allow them to accommodate themselves and adapt their power bases to economies in which the market plays a larger role.
Topic:
Economics and Political Economy
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, Central America, and North America

48. Collective Management of International Financial Crises

Author:
Saori N. Katada
Publication Date:
07-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
The world has experienced many financial crises. Despite numerous research and policy efforts in prevention to present them at of large scale, the global economy has not seen economists' (and investors') Nirvana of financial globalization without the occasional crises. On the contrary, the increasing dynamism and changing nature of financial flows across national borders seem to have created a larger number of new problems for creditors, debtors and international financial institutions. That has typically been true for middle income countries in Latin America and Asia and, very recently, in Eastern Europe, which have been integrated into the international financial system. During the two decades between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, three major sets of financial crises originated from those middle income countries, intensifying concerns for international financial stability.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe, Israel, East Asia, Latin America, Central America, and North America

49. Nicaraguan Property Disputes

Publication Date:
04-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
With the first peaceful transfer of power from one political party to another in Nicaraguan history in 1990, Nicaraguans ended a decade-long civil war and began a process of reconciliation. Within the space of a year, the army was shrunk from 96,000 to less than 15,000 troops, the Nicaraguan Resistance was demobilized, and new forms of dialogue between previously hostile groups emerged. Nevertheless, economic recovery remained elusive in the face of hyperinflation, high expectations and competing demands among organized groups, and a lack of confidence among investors and producers. Disputes over property have played a significant role in Nicaragua's recent political and economic experience, and are a fundamental factor in its future economic recovery and political reconciliation.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Economics, International Law, and Politics
Political Geography:
Latin America and Central America