› › The Labor Market Story Behind Latin America S Transformation

The Labor Market Story Behind Latin America’s Transformation

Author :

Publisher : World Bank Publications

Page : 66 pages

File Size : 48,84 MB

Release : 2012-10-09

Category : Caribbean Area

ISBN : 0821397737

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Book Description

This semiannual report - a product of the Office of the Chief Economist for the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Region of the World Bank - examines in detail the most significant changes experienced by labor markets in LAC countries between the 1990s and the 2000s, and provides an overview of the economic outlook for the LAC region in the coming months. Chapter 1 starts by briefly analyzing the sources of external risks for LAC and describes the economic prospects for the region. Chapter 2 studies how the recent decade of high growth, increased macroeconomic stability and great improvements in the social agenda was accompanied by a rapid transformation of labor markets in LAC. In particular, it documents the forces behind the sharp decline in wage inequality and studies the consequences of disinflation for labor market adjustments.



Going Viral

Author : Guillermo Beylis

Publisher : World Bank Publications

Page : 190 pages

File Size : 10,7 MB

Release : 2020-12-02

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1464814600

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Book Description

COVID-19 started as a health emergency, but it is rapidly evolving into an employment crisis. There is still uncertainty on how severe the economic impact of the pandemic will be. As things go, however, the drag on the region’s employment could last longer than the epidemic itself. Beyond the immediate impacts on the level of employment, the crisis is deepening and accelerating the transformation of jobs, bringing the future closer. Going Viral: COVID-19 and the Accelerated Transformation of Jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean focuses on recent trends in the economies of the region that have been significantly changing the labor market: premature deindustrialization, the servicification of the economy, and the changing skill requirements of jobs as automation advances. The findings of this report have important implications for economic policy. Some of these implications are related to the productivity challenges that Latin America and the Caribbean was already facing after the end of the “Golden Decade†? in 2013. Other policy implications see their relevance enhanced by the COVID-19 crisis. As sectors are impacted in different ways, as new technologies are developed and adopted, and as working remotely becomes more common, governments need to respond in ways that support a smooth transformation of jobs—one that is socially acceptable and that contributes to productivity growth, including investing in the human capital of the workforce. The accelerated transformation of jobs also calls for a rethinking of labor regulations and social protection policies. The institutional architecture geared to wage earners in the formal sector is quickly becoming outdated. The report calls for the flexible regulation of the emerging forms of work, in a way that encourages employment and supports formalization, thereby expanding the coverage of social protection. to larger segments



Law and Employment

Author : James J. Heckman

Publisher : University of Chicago Press

Page : 585 pages

File Size : 35,64 MB

Release : 2007-11-01

Category : Law

ISBN : 0226322858

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Book Description

Law and Employment analyzes the effects of regulation and deregulation on Latin American labor markets and presents empirically grounded studies of the costs of regulation. Numerous labor regulations that were introduced or reformed in Latin America in the past thirty years have had important economic consequences. Nobel Prize-winning economist James J. Heckman and Carmen Pagés document the behavior of firms attempting to stay in business and be competitive while facing the high costs of complying with these labor laws. They challenge the prevailing view that labor market regulations affect only the distribution of labor incomes and have little or no impact on efficiency or the performance of labor markets. Using new micro-evidence, this volume shows that labor regulations reduce labor market turnover rates and flexibility, promote inequality, and discriminate against marginal workers. Along with in-depth studies of Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Trinidad, Law and Employment provides comparative analysis of Latin American economies against a range of European countries and the United States. The book breaks new ground by quantifying not only the cost of regulation in Latin America, the Caribbean, and in the OECD, but also the broader impact of this regulation.



Slum Upgrading and Participation

Author : Ivo Imparato

Publisher : World Bank Publications

Page : 520 pages

File Size : 41,19 MB

Release : 2003-01-01

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780821353707

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Book Description

The UN currently estimates that there are about 837 million urban slum dwellers worldwide, and this figure is likely to rise to 1.5 billion by 2020 if current trends are not reversed. This book offers five geographically and institutionally diverse case studies from Latin America, where some of the longest-running and most successful programmes in this field have been conducted. These programmes, involving a wide variety of funding arrangements and agencies, demonstrate the positive impact that community participation and people-oriented service solutions can have on slum upgrading efforts in low income urban areas.



Achieving Effective Social Protection for All in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author : Helena Ribe

Publisher : World Bank Publications

Page : 140 pages

File Size : 47,98 MB

Release : 2010-06-22

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 082138399X

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Book Description

This study highlights the interaction between social protection programs and labor markets in the Latin America region. It presents new evidence on the limited coverage of existing programs and emphasizes the challenges caused by high informality for achieving universal social protection for old age income, for health, for unemployment risks and for anti poverty safety nets. It identifies interaction effects between SP programs and the behavioral responses of workers, firms and social protection providers, which can further undermine efforts to expand coverage, summarizing evidence from recent work across the region. It argues for a re-design of financing to eliminate cross subsidies between members of contributory programs and subsidies that effectively tax income from formal employment. Instead, it advocates well-targeted, tax-funded tapered subsidies to provide incentives to the savings efforts of low income workers, coupled with an effective safety net for the extreme poor who have no capacity to contribute to financing their own social protection arrangements. It also argues for the consolidation of programs and harmonization of benefits packages across different insurers. The book develops an overall conceptual framework and presents in-depth analysis of the main SP sectors of pensions, health, unemployment insurance and safety net transfers.



Cashing in on Education

Author : Mercedes Mateo Díaz

Publisher : World Bank Publications

Page : 271 pages

File Size : 26,82 MB

Release : 2016-10-19

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1464809038

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Book Description

Investments in education across countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have transformed the lives of millions of girls and the prospects of their families and societies. Unleashing the full economic potential of women is nevertheless still a curtailed issue in the region: just about half of women are unable to participate in paid work. The majority of the population out of the labor market is women between the ages of 24 and 45. This is the largest share of the available pool of unused human capital countries have, and where mothers of young children are concentrated. This book argues that more and better childcare constitutes a fundamental policy option to improve female outcomes in the labor market, but countries need to pay particular attention to the design and features of such services. First-rate educational programs will be useless if children are not enrolled or do not attend formal education centers. A large program expansion will be wasted if parents cannot enroll their children because they are unable to reach the center, don’t trust its quality, if the program is too expensive, or if work and care schedules are not compatible. Through an integrated framework applied to each country and an overview of the existing evidence, this book addresses the why and what questions about policy relevant instruments to achieve female labor participation. Parts I and II of the book lay out the motivation for Latin-American and Caribbean countries to act depicting their current situation both in terms of women’s labor participation and the use and provision of childcare services. Moreover, this book tackles the how question contributing to the incipient evidence about factors affecting the take-up of programs and demand for childcare services and other informal care arrangements. Part III of the book explores how to improve services and implement more and better formal, center-based care arrangements for young children. It looks at international benchmarks, discusses different experiences and proposes specific actions to solve potential inequalities in access to childcare.



At a Crossroads

Author : María Marta Ferreyra

Publisher : World Bank Publications

Page : 387 pages

File Size : 33,23 MB

Release : 2017-05-18

Category : Education

ISBN : 146481015X

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Book Description

"Higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean has expanded dramatically in the past 15 years, as the average gross enrollment rate has more than doubled, and many new institutions and programs have been opened. Although higher education access has become more equitable, and higher education supply has become more varied, many of the 'new' students in the system are, on average, less academically ready than are their more advantaged counterparts. Furthermore, only half of higher education students, on average, complete their degree, and labor market returns to higher education vary greatly across institutions and programs. Thus, higher education is at a crossroads today. Given the region's urgency to raise productivity in a low-growth, fiscally constrained environment, going past this crossroads requires the formation of skilled human capital fast and efficiently. 'At a Crossroads: Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean' contributes to the discussion by studying quality, variety, and equity of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean. The book presents comprehensive evidence on the recent higher education expansion and evolution of higher education labor market returns. Using novel data and state-of-the-art methods, it studies demand and supply drivers of the recent expansion. It investigates the behavior of institutions and students and explores the unintended consequences of large-scale higher education policies. Framing the analysis are the singular characteristics of the higher education market and the market segmentation induced by the variety of students and institutions in the system. At this crossroads, a role emerges for incentives, information, accountability, and choice."



Wage Inequality in Latin America

Author : Julián Messina

Publisher : World Bank Publications

Page : 292 pages

File Size : 38,41 MB

Release : 2017-12-28

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1464810400

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Book Description

What caused the decline in wage inequality of the 2000s in Latin America? Looking to the future, will the current economic slowdown be regressive? Wage Inequality in Latin America: Understanding the Past to Prepare for the Future addresses these two questions by reviewing relevant literature and providing new evidence on what we know from the conceptual, empirical, and policy perspectives. The answer to the fi rst question can be broken down into several parts, although the bottom line is that the changes in wage inequality resulted from a combination of three forces: (a) education expansion and its eff ect on falling returns to skill (the supply-side story); (b) shifts in aggregate domestic demand; and (c) exchange rate appreciation from the commodity boom and the associated shift to the nontradable sector that changed interfi rm wage diff erences. Other forces had a non-negligible but secondary role in some countries, while they were not present in others. These include the rapid increase of the minimum wage and a rapid trend toward formalization of employment, which played a supporting role but only during the boom. Understanding the forces behind recent trends also helps to shed light on the second question. The analysis in this volume suggests that the economic slowdown is putting the brakes on the reduction of inequality in Latin America and will likely continue to do so—but it might not actually reverse the region’s movement toward less wage inequality.



Latin America and the Caribbean as Tailwinds Recede

Author : Augusto de la Torre

Publisher : World Bank Publications

Page : 61 pages

File Size : 18,16 MB

Release : 2013-04-17

Category :

ISBN : 0821399756

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Book Description

This semiannual report — a product of the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean Region of the World Bank — examines the short and medium-term challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) as the external factors that were instrumental in the region’s recent performance recede. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the global economy and its implications for the short- and medium-term prospects of the LAC region. Chapter 2 provides a detailed analysis of the general patterns of domestic demand and supply observed in LAC over the last decade. In particular we document the steady increase in LAC’s domestic demand, especially its investment component, as a share of GDP over the 2000s. Moreover, we show that the rise of domestic demand has occurred in tandem with an expansion of the services sector. We assess what are the pitfalls and challenges for LAC’s growth pattern in a less benign global environment.



Regional Economic Outlook, April 2018, Western Hemisphere Department

Author : International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.

Publisher : International Monetary Fund

Page : 134 pages

File Size : 36,95 MB

Release : 2018-05-11

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1484339878

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Book Description

The world economy and global trade are experiencing a broad-based cyclical upswing. Since October 2017, global growth outcomes and the outlook for 2018–19 have improved across all regions, reinforced by the expected positive near-term spillovers from tax policy changes in the United States. Accommodative global financial conditions, despite some tightening and market volatility in early February 2018, have been providing support to economic recovery. Higher commodity prices are contributing to an improved outlook for commodity exporters. The US and Canadian economies posted solid gains in 2017 and are expected to grow above potential in the near term. Despite the improved near-term outlook, however, medium-term prospects are tilted downwards. Growth prospects for advanced economies are subdued and many emerging market and developing economies are projected to grow in per capita terms more slowly than advanced economies, raising concerns about income convergence. While risks appear broadly balanced in the near term, they skew to the downside over the medium term, including a possible sharp tightening of financial conditions, waning popular support for global economic integration, growing trade tensions and risks of a shift toward protectionist policies, and geopolitical strains.