The impact of aid for trade on the cost and time to trade The case of Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography.

Fact Findings and Lessons Learned from the Comparative Study on Information Techonology (IT) Usage by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Latin America and Asia

ECLACs International Trade and Integration Division (DCII) will launch the book titled Information Technology for Development of Small and Medium-sized Exporters in Latin America and East Asia in the end of September 2005. The report provides an overview of the present condition of Information Technology (IT) and its use to promote international trade. It focuses on the experiences of IT usage by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Latin American and Asian-Pacific regions, with a special focus on SME exporters in the 13 researched countries, that were selected from the Forum for East Asia - Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC) member countries. This issue of the FAL bulletin is produced based on the executive summary of the book.

Neostructuralism and heterodox thinking in Latin America and the Caribbean in the early twenty-first century

The thinking that has unilaterally dominated economic science for over five decades has recently come under intensive scrutiny and its validity and conceptual and empirical coherence are the subject of controversy. Thus the limitations of the prevailing paradigm for addressing the failures of free market economies have been laid bare. For Latin America and the Caribbean, these failures are structural in nature, as indeed structuralism proposed in its time. Neostructuralism delves more deeply into the issues addressed in structuralism, aiming to improve positioning in the international economy, boost productive employment creation, reduce structural heterogeneity and improve income distribution, while maintaining financial balances capable of sustaining changes in the sphere of production by means of social and State support. Far from being an insular system of thinking, neostructuralism is an open system that lends itself to dialogue with other philosophies that recognize the limitations of the dominant paradigm and object to its methodological monism. This book offers a fresh look at neostructuralism and heterodox thinking at the start of the twenty-first century. In a context shaped by the impacts of the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression and by paradigmatic changes at the global level, it aims to carve out arenas for discussion between alternative lines of thinking in order to lay the foundations for a socioeconomically inclusive and environmentally sustainable model of development for the region.