Cross-border payment inefficiencies are a significant barrier to trade both within Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and between LAC and other regions. This paper provides a comprehensive review of historical efforts undertaken by various countries within the LAC region to address these challenges. We also explore the potential of recent financial innovations, such as digital currencies and blockchain technology, to enhance cross-border payments. While new technologies do not substitute for prudent and credible macroeconomic policies, leveraging these technologies can help LAC countries reduce transaction costs and times, thus enhancing economic efficiency and fostering deeper regional and global trade relationships.
Despite some improvement since 2011, Latin America and the Caribbean continue to lag behind other regions in terms of financial inclusion. There is no clear evidence that fintech developments have supported greater financial inclusion in LAC, contrary to what has been observed elsewhere in the world. Case studies by national policy experts suggest that barriers to entry in the financial sector, along with a constraining regulatory environment, may have hindered a faster adoption of fintech. However, fintech development seems to have accelerated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and with the support of recent policy initiatives.
This paper provides a brief historical journey of central banking in Latin America to shed light on the debate about monetary policy in the post-global financial crisis period. The paper distinguishes three periods in Latin America’s central bank history: the early years, when central banks endorsed the gold standard and coped with the collapse of this monetary system; a second period, in which central banks turned into development banks under the aegis of governments at the expense of increasing inflation; and the “golden years,” when central banks succeeded in preserving price stability in an environment of political independence. The paper concludes by cautioning against overburdening central banks in Latin America with multiple mandates as this could end up undermining their hard-won monetary policy credibility.
Globalization and Development draws upon the experiences of the Latin American and Caribbean region to provide a multidimensional assessment of the globalization process from the perspective of developing countries. Based on a study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), this book gives a historical overview of economic development in the region and presents both an economic and noneconomic agenda that addresses disparity, respects diversity, and fosters complementarity among regional, national, and international institutions. For orders originating outside of North America, please visit the World Bank website for a list of distributors and geographic discounts at http://publications.worldbank.org/howtoorder or e-mail [email protected].
Real borders can be thick. They are not dimensionless lines as typically assumed in theoretical models and standard empirical analyses, but a zone populated by agencies that develop and administer regulations firms have to comply with when engaging in international trade, many of which have their own procedures. Borders can then easily become a labyrinth hard to get through. This is crucial because border agencies' procedures influence the time needed to ship goods from their origins to their destinations and can thereby affect trade, particularly in a context characterized by increasingly segmented production chains and rising lean retailing. Latin American and Caribbean countries have recently implemented various trade facilitation initiatives that aim to streamline the administrative processing of trade flows and accordingly reduce trading times. These initiatives include risk management, single windows, authorized economic operators, simplified postal exports, and expedited transit arrangements, all of which are cornerstones of the 2013 WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation and have been subject of multiple international organizations' operations. Despite of being ubiquitous, evidence on the impact of these specific initiatives has been extremely limited. Lack of precise data has been a major obstacle. Out of the Border Labyrinth fills this gap and sheds entirely new light on the trade effects of such trade facilitation measures and the channels thereof. It presents the results of thorough impact evaluations, which have been carried out by applying rigorous methods on unprecedented transaction-level data for several countries in the region. These results reveal that trade actually expanded as a consequence of such facilitation measures and that the primary channel has been shipping frequency. Based on these econometric examinations and careful institutional case studies, Out of the Border Labyrinth systematizes a new line of trade policy research and informs policymaking and assistance activities by international organizations by providing tools that will help design and assess policies in an area that will be very active in upcoming years as countries work towards implementing the multilateral agreement reached in Bali.
Workers' remittances have become a major source of financing for developing countries and are especially important in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is at the top of the ranking of remittance receiving regions in the world. While there has been a recent surge in analytical work on the topic, this book is motivated by the large heterogeneity in migration and remittance patterns across countries and regions, and by the fact that existing evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean is restricted to only a few countries, such as Mexico and El Salvador. Because the nature of the phenomenon varies across countries, its development impact and policy implications are also likely to differ in ways that are still largely unknown. This book helps fill the gap by exploring, in the specific context of Latin America and Caribbean countries, some of the main questions faced by policymakers when trying to respond to increasing remittances flows. The book relies on cross-country panel data and household surveys for 11 Latin American countries to explore the development impact of remittance flows along several dimensions: growth, poverty, inequality, schooling, health, labor supply, financial development, and real exchange rates.
Many Latin American economies have experienced significant reductions in growth recently, as a result of the end of the commodity super-cycle and the rebalancing of China’s growth, and a number of global banks have been leaving the region. AlthoughLatin American countries were generally less affected by the global financial crisis (GFC) than other regions, the region continues also to suffer from the protracted sluggish growth in advanced economies. In addition, there has since 2008 been a withdrawal of global banks from the region, thus potentially worsening access to credit or reducing competition in the financial sector. More broadly, the GFC demonstrated that extreme economic volatility can originate from outside the region, rather than internally, as was the experience of the 1980s and 1990s...
The Latin American Economic Outlook 2021: Working Together for a Better Recovery aims to analyse and provide policy recommendations for a strong, inclusive and environmentally sustainable recovery in the region. The report explores policy actions to improve social protection mechanisms and increase social inclusion, foster regional integration and strengthen industrial strategies, and rethink the social contract to restore trust and empower citizens at all stages of the policy‐making process.
This document examines the global and regional evolution of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and offers recommendations so these flows can contribute to the region's productive development processes.
The 2018 Macroeconomic Report, A Mandate to Grow, revisits the growth debate that has been raging in the region for the past half century. Viewing the debate from this long-term perspective allows for a focus on the structural factors that have prevented Latin America and the Caribbean from reaching the growth potential required to keep pace with faster growing regions and to fulfill the aspirations of its population.
