Latin American Development Forum
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This series promotes debate and disseminates knowledge and analysis on economic and social development issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. Books in this series discuss economic growth, structural reforms, social security, globalization and its social effects, poverty reduction strategies, macroeconomic stability and capital flows, financial systems and market reforms, and more. Sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and the World Bank, the series seeks to convey the excitement and complexity of the most topical issues in the region. Titles in this peer-reviewed series are selected for their relevance to the academic community and represent the highest quality research output of each institution.
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Publication
Entrepreneurship in Latin America : A Step Up the Social Ladder?
(Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, 2014)This book looks at both the potential and limits of policies to promote entrepreneurship as an important vehicle for social mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean. Who are the region's entrepreneurs? They tend to be middle-aged males with secondary and, often, tertiary education who represent only a small segment of the economically active population in the six countries considered in this book. They come from families in which a parent is, or was, an entrepreneur. In fact, a parent's occupation is more important in the decision to become an entrepreneur than a parent's wealth, income or education. Middle class entrepreneurship tends to dominate the sample in part since this is the majority class in society. However, as a percentage of each social class, entrepreneurship tends to be higher in the upper class, followed by the middle and lower class. Entrepreneurs concentrate in micro enterprises with fewer than five employees. They enjoy greater social mobility than employees and the self-employed, but this mobility is not always in the upward direction. Entrepreneurs face multiple obstacles including stifling bureaucracy, burdensome tax procedures, and lack of financing, human capital, technological skills, and supportive networks. The support of family and friends and a modicum of social capital help cope with these obstacles to entrepreneurship. -
Publication
Discrimination in Latin America : An Economic Perspective
(Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank, 2010)The chapters presented in this volume adopt a variety of these methodological tools in order to explore the extent to which discrimination against women and demographic minorities is pervasive in Latin America. In chapter two, Castillo, Petrie, and Torero present a series of experiments to understand the nature of discrimination in urban Lima, Peru. They design and apply experiments that exploit degrees of information on performance as a way to assess how personal characteristics affect how people sort into groups. Along similar lines, in chapter three, Cardenas and his research team use an experimental field approach in Colombia to better understand pro-social preferences and behavior of both individuals involved in the provision of social services (public servants) and potential beneficiaries of those services (the poor). In chapter four, Elias, Elias, and Ronconi try to understand social status and race during adolescence in Argentina. They asked high school students to select and rank ten classmates with whom they would like to form a team and use this information to construct a measure of popularity. In chapters five and six, Bravo, Sanhueza, and Urzua present two studies covering different aspects of the labor market using different methodological tools. Based on an audit study by mail, their first study attempts to detect gender, social class, and neighborhood of residence discrimination in hiring practices by Chilean fir. In a second study, they use a structural model to analyze gender differences in the Chilean labor market. In chapter seven, Soruco, Piani, and Rossi measure and analyze possible discriminatory behaviors against international emigrants and their families remaining in southern Ecuador (the city of Cuenca and the rural canton of San Fernando). Finally, in chapter eight, Gandelman, Gandelman, and Rothschild use micro data on judicial proceedings in Uruguay and present evidence that female defendants receive a more favorable treatment in courts than male defendants. -
Publication
Beyond Survival : Protecting Households from Health Shocks in Latin America
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006)This book breaks new ground in the ongoing debate about health finance and financial protection from the costs of health care. The evidence and discussion support the need to consider financial protection, in addition to health status, as a policy objective when setting priorities for health systems. This book reviews the Latin American experience with health reform in the last 20 years and the fundamentals of health system financing, using new evidence to show the magnitude and mechanisms that determine the impoverishing effects of health events (diseases, accidents, and those of the life cycle). It provides options for policy makers on how to protect, and help household to protect themselves, against this impoverishment. The authors use empirical evidence from six case studies commissioned for this report, on Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Mexico. This book provides policy makers with a solid conceptual basis for decisions on the contents of mandatory health insurance benefit packages, choices of financing mechanisms, and the roles of public policy in this field. It provides an in-depth analysis of, and organizational alternatives for, risk pooling and health insurance for financial protection. It analyzes the urgent need to extend risk pooling to the informal sector, the challenges for current social insurance arrangements, and options for policy makers to effectively extend risk pooling to the informal sector.