This publication reviews Ecuador's fiscal management and public expenditure policies in the context of its development and poverty reduction goals. Findings include that the country's impressive fiscal performance of 2003 is encouraging but fragile, as several structural bottlenecks could impede fiscal discipline and recovery. Reversing poverty trends is critical for the country's stability, and this can only be achieved with well-targeted, effective and efficient pro-poor programmes.
For the first time in the republican history of Peru, the presidential transition takes place in democracy, social peace, fast economic growth and favorable world markets. In other words, there has never been a better chance to build a different Peru - a richer country, more equal and governable. There are multiple ways to achieve that goal. New reforms must stem from a widespread and participatory debate, one of a common vision conceived for and by Peruvians. This book aims at making a technical and independent contribution to such debate; it summarizes the knowledge available about the challenges to be faced by the new administration. The study does not recommend silver bullets, but suggests policy options. It is based on the analysis of the current reality and in six decades of relationships with Peru, in which the Bank has implemented more than 100 projects and prepared more than 500 technical reports covering the wide range of development topics. When necessary, the study provides lessons that the Bank has learned elsewhere. The study provides a conceptual framework to the analysis of the country's 34 economic sectors and the two historical perspectives behind them. In doing so, it offers a comprehensive reform agenda that sheds light on possible priorities and courses of action.
David Sowell traces the history of artisan labor organizations in Bogotá and examines long-term political activity of Colombian artisans in the century after independence. Relying on contemporary newspapers, political handouts, broadsides, and public petitions, Sowell analyzes the economic, social, and political history of the capital's artisan class, a middling social sector with very significant social and political strengths. This is the first study in English of nineteenth-century Latin American artisans and one of the few treatments that spans the whole of nineteenth-century Colombian history.The rise and late decline of artisan class political activity coincided the Colombia's integration into the world market. Initially petitioning for tariff protection, Bogotá's craftsmen in time mobilized to address numerous issues, including industrial education, internal trade order, credit, and better health and educational facilities. Sowell traces the transformation of Colombia's economy and the (mainly negative) effects its evolution had on bogotano artisans. By the end of the nineteenth century, the artisans class was fragmented, their labor leadership replaced by workers associated with industrial production, transportation systems, and the production of coffee. Author note: David Sowell is Assistant Professor of History at Juniata College.
Documents the emergence of a pattern of political instability in Latin America. Traditional military coups have receded in the region, but elected presidents are still ousted from power as a result of recurrent crises. Aníbal Pérez-Liñán shows that presidential impeachment has become the main constitutional instrument employed by civilian elites to depose unpopular rulers. Based on detailed comparative research in five countries and extensive historical information, the book explains why crises without breakdown have become the dominant form of instability in recent years and why some presidents are removed from office while others survive in power. The analysis emphasizes the erosion of presidential approval resulting from corruption and unpopular policies, the formation of hostile coalitions in Congress, and the role of investigative journalism. This book challenges classic assumptions in studies of presidentialism and provides important insights for the fields of political communication, democratization, political behaviour, and institutional analysis.
Fiscal policy in Latin America has been guided primarily by short-term liquidity targets whose observance was taken as the main exponent of fiscal prudence, with attention focused almost exclusively on the levels of public debt and the cash deficit. Very little attention was paid to the effects of fiscal policy on growth and on macroeconomic volatility over the cycle. Important issues such as the composition of public expenditures (and its effects on growth), the ability of fiscal policy to stabilize cyclical fluctuations, and the currency composition of public debt were largely neglected. As a result, fiscal policy has often amplified cyclical volatility and dampened growth. 'Fiscal Policy, Stabilization, and Growth' explores the conduct of fiscal policy in Latin America and its consequences for macroeconomic stability and long-term growth. In particular, the book highlights the procyclical and anti-investment biases embedded in the region's fiscal policies, explores their causes and macroeconomic consequences, and asesses their possible solutions.
This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.
Game theory provides a mathematical setting for analyzing competition and cooperation in interactive situations. The theory has been famously applied in economics, but is relevant in many other sciences, such as political science, biology, and, more recently, computer science. This book presents an introductory and up-to-date course on game theory addressed to mathematicians and economists, and to other scientists having a basic mathematical background. The book is self-contained, providing a formal description of the classic game-theoretic concepts together with rigorous proofs of the main results in the field. The theory is illustrated through abundant examples, applications, and exercises. The style is distinctively concise, while offering motivations and interpretations of the theory to make the book accessible to a wide readership. The basic concepts and results of game theory are given a formal treatment, and the mathematical tools necessary to develop them are carefully presented. Cooperative games are explained in detail, with bargaining and TU-games being treated as part of a general framework. The authors stress the relation between game theory and operations research. The book is suitable for a graduate or an advanced undergraduate course on game theory.
This final volume in the The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests covers the Americas. It provides an up-to-date overview of the status of rain forests in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Following the format of the two previous volumes The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Asia and the Pacific (1991) and The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Africa (1992), the atlas is divided into two parts. Part I introduces and discusses the complex interrelated issues in the regions that are involved in both deforestation as well as conservation of the tropical forests. Included are discussions on the history of the forests, agricultural colonization policies and deforestation, conservation polices for plants and wildlife, protected areas, and the future of the tropical forests. Part II is a detailed and well referenced country-by-country analysis of conservation status and trends. Four-colour maps have been compiled from satellite and radar imagery, aerial photography, and the latest information provided by forestry departments and development agencies.
This book examines the options for, and obstacles to, successful financial sector tax reform, both in terms of theoretical and practical aspects. Issues discussed include: the design of optimal tax schemes, the role of imperfect information and the links between taxation and saving, inflation, the income tax treatment of intermediary loan-loss reserves, deposit insurance, VAT and financial transactions taxes; as well as current practice in the industrial world and case studies of distorted national systems. This is a co-publication of the World Bank and Oxford University Press.
This two-volume set of LNCS 12489 and 12490 constitutes the thoroughly refereed conference proceedings of the 21th International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, IDEAL 2020, held in Guimaraes, Portugal, in November 2020.* The 93 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 134 submissions. These papers provided a timely sample of the latest advances in data engineering and machine learning, from methodologies, frameworks, and algorithms to applications. The core themes of IDEAL 2020 include big data challenges, machine learning, data mining, information retrieval and management, bio-/neuro-informatics, bio-inspiredmodels, agents and hybrid intelligent systems, real-world applications of intelligent techniques and AI. * The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
