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61. Journal of Public and International Affairs 2016

Author:
Megan Campbell, Geoff Cooper, Kathryn Alexander, Aneliese Bernard, Nastasha Everheart, Andrej Litvinjenko, Kabira Namit, Saman Rejali, Alisa Tiwari, and Michael Wagner
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Woodrow Wilson School Journal of Public and International Affairs
Institution:
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Abstract:
It is rare to find a journal that examines women’s participation in South Sudan in one chapter and the exploitation of outer space resources in the next; that dissects the effects of Chinese investment in Sub-Saharan Africa and demystifies the Ferguson effect. But the Journal of Public and International Affairs is not your average journal. It represents the very best of what graduate-level public policy students have to contribute to the pressing policy debates of today. It is wide-ranging in subject matter and trenchant in its recommendations. Founded in 1990, but with an ancestor publication dating back to 1963, the JPIA is based on the notion that students of public policy have important things to say about public affairs and that careful analysis and targeted critique can pave the way for meaningful change and progress. The graduate students published in this year’s JPIA combine practical experience from around the world with intensive academic study. They have spent the last year diving deep into the issues they are passionate about and have all been challenged by the need to move past descriptive analysis and towards concrete solutions. These papers represent the best of their scholarship.
Topic:
Security, Gender Issues, Government, Regional Cooperation, International Affairs, Foreign Direct Investment, Counter-terrorism, Women, Inequality, Protests, Policy Implementation, Rural, and Sanitation
Political Geography:
China, Iran, Middle East, India, Central America, West Africa, North America, South Sudan, Sahel, and United States of America

62. Special Economic Zones in Panama: Technology spillovers from a labor market perspective

Author:
Ricardo Hausmann, Juan Obach, and Miguel Angel Santos
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Special Economic Zones (SEZ) have played an important role in Panama's successful growth story over the previous decade. SEZ have attracted local and foreign investment by leveraging a business-friendly environment of low transaction costs, and created many stable, well-paid jobs for Panamanians. Beyond that, SEZ shall be assessed as place-based policy by their capacity to boost structural transformations, namely attracting new skills and more complex know-how not to be found in the domestic economy. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the three largest SEZ in Panama: Colon Free Zone, Panama-Pacific, and City of Knowledge. Our results suggest that SEZ have been successful as measured by static indicators, such as foreign investment, job creation and productivity. We also find that SEZ have boosted inflows of high-skill immigrants, who are most likely generating positive knowledge spillovers on Panamanians productivity and wages. However, significant legal instruments and institutional designs are preventing Panama from taking full advantage of the skill variety hosted at the SEZ. Complex immigration processes inhibiting foreigners from transitioning out of the SEZ, a long list of restricted professions and even citizenships considered as a national security concern, are hindering the flow of knowledge, keeping the benefits coming from more complex multinational companies locked inside the gates of SEZ.
Topic:
Business, Economic growth, Investment, and Special Economic Zones
Political Geography:
Central America and Panama

63. Shifting Gears: A Growth Diagnostic of Panama

Author:
Ricardo Hausmann, Luis Espinoza, and Miguel Angel Santos
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Leveraging on the Canal, Panama has a developed a major comparative advantage in the exportable services sector. In turn, the stellar growth in this sector has spurred the demand for construction, which has been key to promote upward social mobility and increase labor productivity. But there are signs that this sector is receding, incapable of sustaining growth rates that are higher than the rest of the economy. This threatens to undo some of the progress made in terms of reducing income inequality and poverty in the country, and have the potential to stir social unrest. To face these new challenges, Panama must increase its stock of human capital by improving the quality of education, which is among the lowest in the world. Meanwhile, the country must open up to high-skilled immigration by removing harmful restrictions. To fully profit from immigration, it is equally important to maximize the diffusion of these skills and promote know- how spill overs through adequate policy. Finally, Panama must strengthen its institutions and reduce red tape and corruption, which most firms currently consider the most binding constraint to growth.
Topic:
Development, Immigration, Infrastructure, Economic growth, Institutions, and Human Capital
Political Geography:
Central America and Panama

64. Panama beyond the Canal: Using Technological Proximities to Identify Opportunities for Productive Diversification

Author:
Ricardo Hausmann, Jose Ramon Morales, and Miguel Angel Santos
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
The economy of Panama has thrived for more than a decade, based on a modern service sector on the activities surrounding the Canal. Panama has inserted its economy into global value chains, providing competitive services in logistics, ship handling, financial intermediation, insurance, communication and trade. The expansion of the modern service sector required significant non-residential construction, including office buildings, commercial outlets, warehouses, and even shopping malls. Large public infrastructure projects such as the expansion of the Canal, the Metro, and Tocumen airport, have provided an additional drive and paved the road for productive diversification. But productive diversification does not spread randomly. A country diversifies towards activities that demand similar capacities than the ones already in place. Current capabilities and know-how can be recombined and redeployed into new, adjacent activities, of higher value added. This report identifies productive capabilities already in place in Panama, as signaled by the variety and ubiquity of products and services that is already able to manufacture and provide competitively. Once there, we move on to identifying opportunities for productive diversification based on technological proximity. As a result, we provide a roadmap for potential diversification opportunities both at the national and sub-national level.
Topic:
Development, Infrastructure, Economy, Economic growth, and Diversification
Political Geography:
Central America and Panama

65. Keeping One's Eye on the Ball: Exploring the Intensity of Sports Activities across Europe

Author:
Stuart Russell, Carla Tokman, Douglas Barrios, and Matt Andrews
Publication Date:
07-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
As described in Russell, Barrios & Andrews (2016), past attempts to understand the sports economy have been constrained by a number of data limitations. For instance, many of these accounts use revenues when value added measures would be more appropriate. Similarly, many accounts use top-down definitions that result in double counting and an inflated estimate of the size of the sports economy. More importantly, past accounts have focused most of their efforts estimating the overarching size of the sports economy. Constrained by aggregated data that groups a wide range of sports-related economic activities together, they primarily discuss the size of the sports-related economic activity. Their focus on answering the question of "How big?" conceals substantial differences between activities. Core sports activities, such as professional sports teams, behave very differently than activities, like sporting goods manufacturing that are closer to the periphery of the sports economy. Likewise, there are even important differences amongst core sports activities. Professional sports teams are very different than fitness facilities, and they might differ in different respects. Guerra (2016) demonstrates that, when detailed, disaggregated data are available, the possibilities to analyze and understand the sports are greatly increased. For instance, Guerra (2016) were able to conduct skills-based analyses, magnitude analyses, employment characterizations, geographic distribution analyses, and calculations of the intensity of sports activities. The sector disaggregation, spatial disaggregation, and database complementarity present in the Mexico data used in that paper therefore enables a more detailed and nuanced understanding of sports and sports-related economic activity. Data with characteristics similar to those found in Mexico are few and far between. We have, unfortunately, been unable to completely escape such data limitations. However, we have compiled and analyzed a large array of employment data on sports-related economic activities in Europe. In the paper that follows, we describe our analyses of these data and the findings produced. Section 1 begins with a discussion of employment in sports and an explanation of why we chose this variable for our analyses. Section 2 provides an overview of the data used in this paper particularly focusing on the differences between it and the Mexico data discussed in Guerra (2016). It also describes the methodology we use. We analyze these data using one of two related measures to understand the intensity of sports-related activities across different geographic areas in countries. We also construct measures at the level of a single country in order to compare across entire economies. At the international level, we adopt the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) measure that Balassa (1965) first developed to analyze international trade. Within specific countries, however, we use a population-adjusted version of the RCA measure known as RPOP. Section 3 presents the most relevant findings and Section 4 discusses their limitations. Section 5 concludes with the lessons learned and avenues for future research. While there are limitations on these analyses, they can give policymakers a better understanding of the distribution and concentration of sports across space. Such information can serve as an important input for sports-related investment decisions and other sports-related policies.
Topic:
Employment, Sports, Economy, and International Development
Political Geography:
Europe, Central America, and European Union

66. Towards a Prosperous and Productive Chiapas: Institutions, Policies, and Public-Private Dialog to Promote Inclusive Growth

Author:
Ricardo Hausmann, Timothy Cheston, Miguel Angel Santos, and Carlo Pietrobelli
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Since the Zapatista revolution of January 1994, enormous amount of resources coming from the federal government have poured over Chiapas. The gap in years and quality of education has been reduced significantly; and road, port and airport infrastructure have undergone a dramatic transformation. And yet, the income gap between Chiapas and the rest of Mexico has only widened. To understand why, a multi-disciplinary team of twelve experts have devoted significant time and resources to study different aspects of the development dynamic of Chiapas. As a result, 5 base documents have been published analyzing Chiapas: Complexity profile, Growth Diagnostic, Institutional Diagnostic, Poverty profile, and Pilot of productive dialogs and inclusive growth in an indigenous community. This report resumes the findings from these and articulates their corresponding recommendations into a policy plan. According to our hypothesis, Chiapas is wedged in a low productivity trap. A modern production system, responsible for productivity increases, income and development elsewhere in the world, requires a number of complementary inputs or capacities that are absent in Chiapas. As a result, its economy consists of a few primary products of little or no technological sophistication, and a vibrant service industry fueled by public expenditure in its larger cities. In this situation, there are no incentives to acquire additional education or skills because there is no demand for them in the economy. As we have proved, the few that manage to emigrate earn salaries elsewhere in Mexico slightly above other migrants with similar qualifications. As it turns out, it is not about the Chiapanecos, it is about Chiapas. To overcome the current dilemmas and spark the engine of growth, Chiapas needs to resolve its issues of coordination, connectivity and gradually promote economic activities of higher complexity. Yazaki, one of the few manufacturers present in Chiapas, is an example of the role of the state in helping the economy to overcome the chicken-and-egg dilemmas, providing the public goods required - in an initial push – by a more complex economy. Our recommendations are based in identifying the productive capabilities embedded within the current productive structure of Chiapas four largest urban agglomerations, and leveraging on them to board on different potential, more complex industries that use a similar base of knowledge. To conquer those industries and diversify its economy, Chiapas needs a public-private agency empowered to iteratively solve the issues and bottlenecks these potential industries face in each particular place. Public transport and housing policy can be used as means to incorporating the surrounding communities into the increasingly modern economies of urban centers. Special economic zones and agro-industrial parks can be used to spur productivity in those areas where labor and appropriability are the most binding constrains.
Topic:
Development, Poverty, Infrastructure, Income Inequality, Economic growth, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Central America, Mexico, and Chiapas

67. A Medium- and Long-Term Plan to Address the Central American Refugee Situation

Author:
Dan Restrepo and Silva Mathema
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for American Progress - CAP
Abstract:
It is impossible to understand the flow of refugees emanating from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—collectively, known as the Northern Triangle of Central America—without understanding the security and economic conditions in each of the three countries. Despite important differences, the three Northern Triangle countries are among the poorest in the Americas and the most violent in the world. Based on statistics from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador were three of the five most dangerous countries in the world in 2013—the last year for which U.N. statistics are available. That year, Honduras had the world’s highest per capita homicide rate, at 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people; El Salvador ranked fourth, with a rate of 41.2 homicides per 100,000 people; and Guatemala was fifth, with a rate of 39.9 homicides per 100,000 people. Since then, the situation in El Salvador has dramatically worsened following the 2014 breakdown of a 2012 truce between two of its largest and most powerful street gangs: MS-13 and Barrio 18. In 2015, El Salvador became the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere, with a homicide rate of 108.5 per 100,000. This made it 24 times more dangerous than the United States, which had a homicide rate of 4.5 per 100,000 in 2014. The violence in some of these countries’ cities is even worse. For example, San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, averaged one murder every hour in August 2015—the highest number of murders since the end of the country’s horrific civil war in 1992.5 The 2015 homicide rates in both Honduras and Guatemala improved to 62.5 and 29.2 homicides per 100,000 people, respectively.
Topic:
Migration, Border Control, Refugee Crisis, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Central America, North America, Honduras, El Salvador, and United States of America

68. A Short-Term Plan to Address the Central American Refugee Situation

Author:
Philip E. Wolgin
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for American Progress - CAP
Abstract:
Over the past half-decade, rising violence and structural poverty in the Northern Triangle region of Central America—which encompasses El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—have pushed thousands of children and families to flee for safety. These three countries are some of the most dangerous on the planet, with high rates of homicide and specifically femicide—the killing of women and girls. Violence, corruption, and extortion play a big part in everyday life. Since 2014, more than 120,000 children and another 120,000 people in family units from this region have arrived in the United States seeking protection. The flow of these asylum seekers peaked in fiscal year 2014 before dipping, perhaps temporarily, in FY 2015. This drop occurred not because conditions improved in the region but because of a sustained effort by the U.S. government—with the help of Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries—to stop people from making the dangerous journey or to intercept them on the way to the United States. This year, in FY 2016, the numbers of children and families arriving in the United States have begun to rise again as conditions in the region continue to deteriorate. This report lays out short-term recommendations for ensuring that all asylum seekers who reach the United States receive a full and fair shot at protection. The recommendations are structured to follow the process that children and families go through when seeking protection: arrival in the United States, custody determinations and detention, and proceedings in the immigration courts.
Topic:
Migration, Border Control, Refugee Crisis, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and United States of America

69. Ethnographying State Violence: Narratives and Experiences of Victims of the “War on Drugs” in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico | Ethnographier la violence d’État : récits et expériences des victimes de la lutte contre le narcotrafic à Ciudad Juárez, Mexique

Author:
Chiara Calzolaio
Publication Date:
09-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Cultures & Conflits
Institution:
Cultures & Conflits
Abstract:
With over ten thousand victims, the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez was one of the most violent theatres of the war against drug trafficking, which was initiated by the former Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, during his 2006-2012 mandate. This article draws parallels between, on the one hand, the manner through which the government problematized the rise in homicides and, on the other hand, the experiences of some of the victims of violence inflicted by law enforcement agencies. Drawing from ethnographic material collected between 2008 and 2011, the practices of state violence implemented during the last military operation are approached here through the experiences and narratives of victims.
Topic:
War on Drugs, State Violence, Ethnography, and Violence
Political Geography:
Central America, Mexico, and Ciudad Juarez

70. Humanitarian Protection for Children Fleeing Gang-Based Violence in the Americas

Author:
Elizabeth Carlson and Ann Marie Gallagher
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
By the end of 2011, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began to see a steady rise in the number of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) from Central America, particularly from the Northern Triangle countries— El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala—arriving to the US-Mexico border. The number of children entering the United States from these countries more than doubled during fiscal year (FY) 2012 and continued to grow through FY 2014. In FY 2013, CBP apprehended over 35,000 children. That number almost doubled to 66,127 in FY 2014, with Central American children outnumbering their Mexican counterparts for the first time. Research has identified high levels of violence perpetrated by gangs and drug cartels in the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico as a primary reason for this surge. Under the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) passed with bi-partisan support in 2008, children from Central America cannot be deported immediately and must be given a court hearing.
Topic:
Political Violence, War on Drugs, Border Control, Children, and Trafficking
Political Geography:
Central America and United States of America