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"Lederman, Maloney, and Serven offer an excellent empirical
investigation into the impacts of the North America Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) on the Mexican economy. . . . The authors pay
close attention to the experiences of other Latin American
countries and the European Union while avoiding ideological
debates." -- CHOICE
" Lessons from NAFTA" is important perhaps less for what it tells
us about changes under a free-trade agreement and more for its
nuanced and careful empirical investigation of how trade can
actually make people better off. This, indeed, is the ' big story'
of NAFTA and the potential for free trade agreements in the
region." -- Political Science Quarterly"
"Lederman, Maloney, and Serven offer an excellent empirical
investigation into the impacts of the North America Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) on the Mexican economy. . . . The authors pay
close attention to the experiences of other Latin American
countries and the European Union while avoiding ideological
debates." -- CHOICE
" Lessons from NAFTA" is important perhaps less for what it tells
us about changes under a free-trade agreement and more for its
nuanced and careful empirical investigation of how trade can
actually make people better off. This, indeed, is the ' big story'
of NAFTA and the potential for free trade agreements in the
region." -- Political Science Quarterly"
Latin America' s macroeconomic crises of the 1980s and ' 90s forced
a severe fiscal adjustment across the region. More often than not,
fiscal stability was achieved at the cost of a drastic compression
of public infrastructure spending, accompanied by the hope that the
private sector would take the leading role in infrastructure
provision. This book documents the major trends in infrastructure
provision in Latin America over the past two decades n order to
assess the consequences of this changed public-private partnership
from the perspective of economic growth, public finances, and the
quantity and quality of infrastructure services. It will be of
particular interest to those in the fields of infrastructure,
fiscal policy, and economic growth, and anyone concerned with Latin
America' s development. 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].
The Schumpeterian process of 'creative destruction' is an essential
ingredient of a dynamic economy. In many countries around the
world, however, this process is weakened by pervasive regulation of
product and factor markets. This book documents the regulatory
obstacles faced by firms, particularly in developing countries, and
assesses their implications for firm renewal and macroeconomic
performance. Combining a variety of methodological
approaches--analytical and empirical, micro and macroeconomic,
single- and cross-country-- the book provides evidence that
streamlining the regulatory framework would have a significant
social pay-off, particularly in developing countries that are also
burdened by weak governance. The book's chapters trace out
analytically and empirically the links between microeconomic
policies and distortions, on the one hand, and aggregate
performance in terms of productivity, growth and volatility, on the
other. The volume adds to a novel but increasingly influential
literature that seeks to understand macroeconomic phenomena from a
microeconomic perspective, and derive the relevant lessons for
development policy. Such literature is still fairly scarce in the
case of industrial countries, and virtually in its infancy for
developing countries.
Over the 1980s and 1990s, most Latin American countries witnessed a
retrenchment of the public sector from infrastructure provision and
an opening up of infrastructure activities to the private sector.
This book analyzes the consequences of these policy changes from
two perspectives. First, it reviews in a comparative framework the
major trends in infrastructure provision in Latin America over the
last two decades. Second, it evaluates the implication of these
trends for economic growth and public deficits in the region. The
book shows that in most countries private participation did not
fully offset the public sector retrenchment. The result was a
slowdown in infrastructure accumulation, which entailed a
significant growth cost and weakened the intended impact of the
infrastructure spending cuts on public sector insolvency.
That raising income levels alleviates poverty, and that economic
growth can be more or less effective in doing so, is well known and
has received renewed attention in the search for pro-poor growth.
What is less well explored is the reverse channel: that poverty
may, in fact, be part of the reason for a country's poor growth
performance. This more elaborated view of the development process
opens the door to the existence of vicious circles in which low
growth results in high poverty and high poverty in turn results in
low growth. 'Poverty Reduction and Growth' is about the existence
of these vicious circles in Latin America and the Caribbean about
the ways and means to convert them into virtuous circles in which
poverty reduction and high growth reinforce each other. Through its
analysis of fresh data and the attention it pays to issues such as
the persistent inequality in the region, the role played by various
microdeterminants of income, and the potential existence of human
capital underinvestment traps, this title should be a valuable
contribution to the current regional debate on poverty and growth,
a debate that is critical to the design of policies conducive to
enhancing welfare in all is dimensions among the poor of Latin
America and the Caribbean.
Saving rates display great variation across countries and over
time. They are also closely related to growth performance. This
1999 volume provides an account of key variables, institutions and
policies that determine saving. Drawing from a systematic
exploration of the existing literature, the collection summarizes
knowledge about cross-country saving trends, the relation between
saving and growth, the impact of financial policies and
institutions on saving, the effect of foreign resource inflows on
saving, and the links between income distribution and aggregate
saving. In addition, new research results are presented on the two
latter areas. The work has a strong empirical motivation: to help
address real-world issues on consumption and saving in both
industrial and developing countries, in order to assist in the
design of rational and effective macroeconomic policies.
Saving rates display great variation across countries and over
time. They are also closely related to growth performance. This
1999 volume provides an account of key variables, institutions and
policies that determine saving. Drawing from a systematic
exploration of the existing literature, the collection summarizes
knowledge about cross-country saving trends, the relation between
saving and growth, the impact of financial policies and
institutions on saving, the effect of foreign resource inflows on
saving, and the links between income distribution and aggregate
saving. In addition, new research results are presented on the two
latter areas. The work has a strong empirical motivation: to help
address real-world issues on consumption and saving in both
industrial and developing countries, in order to assist in the
design of rational and effective macroeconomic policies.
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