Economic growth with equity: challenges for Latin America

Includes bibliography

The economics of climate change

This paper focuses on several key economic issues relevant to climate change. Given the fact that changes in climate are projections using the best available data, it examines the economic principles of uncertainty and the precautionary approach, and then continues to address the key drivers of climate change. Climate change is expected to result in negative impacts and, in this regard, the consequences of anticipated rising temperatures and sea levels as well as changes in precipitation that may result in flooding and/or drought are addressed. However, the situation is not all negative and, as such, the opportunities that are likely to arise through adaptation and mitigation are discussed especially with respect to the Caribbean. In this regard and recognizing that it would be useful to Caribbean policymakers to utilize these opportunities and to address the negative impacts, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), through its subregional headquarters for the Caribbean, is spearheading a review of the economics of climate change in the Caribbean with a view to providing quantitative information to stakeholders in dealing with climate change. The paper makes recommendations for the Caribbean to address climate change at the national level. These include macroplanning; promotion of energy efficiency; creation of incentives to obtain support for implementation of alternative energy technologies; maintaining the will among stakeholders on a sustained basis for addressing climate change; and the conduct of relevant research into varieties of plants and animals that could adapt to changing climatic conditions. Finally, it must be recognized that to successfully combat climate change, the threats and opportunities must be properly assessed as part of an ongoing region-wide system of risk management, which should not be incidental, but integral, to national and regional planning and forecasting for the future.

Mexico: Combining monthly inflation predictions from surveys

We examine the problem of combining Mexican inflation predictions or projections provided by a biweekly survey of professional forecasters. Consumer price inflation in Mexico is measured twice a month. We consider several combining methods and advocate the use of dimension reduction techniques whose performance is compared with different benchmark methods, including the simplest average prediction. Missing values in the database are imputed by two different databased methods. The results obtained are basically robust to the choice of the imputation method. A preliminary analysis of the data was based on its panel data structure and showed the potential usefulness of using dimension reduction techniques to combine the experts' predictions. The main findings are: the first monthly predictions are best combined by way of the first principal component of the predictions available; the best second monthly prediction is obtained by calculating the median prediction and is more accurate than the first one.

Regional Climate Modelling In The Caribbean

The information here represents a compilation of existing and ongoing regional and national climate modelling studies that could be useful in the execution of the regional project The Economics of Climate Change in Caribbean. The report is mainly focused on the sustainable regional efforts that represent opportunities for further developments in climate change scenarios. It describes the different techniques that have been used to model changes in temperature and precipitation in the Caribbean and compares the outputs of these models. Essentially, temperatures are expected to increase while precipitation may increase for countries in the more southerly latitudes, but decrease for more northerly countries (Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola) resulting in drought. These changes would present tremendous challenges for the Caribbean subregion and, despite significant progress made in recent years, there is a need for continuous development of climate research and modelling in the subregion, to produce more relevant information for regional and national studies and to overcome the limitations of existing results. This may well be realized through coordination of activities between the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), the Institute of Meteorology (INSMET) in Cuba and the University of the West Indies (UWI). These activities will address the implementation of further analyses using available information to generate best practices and to produce useful results. There are also new opportunities for climate research in the region with Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) which is planned to start early next year. It is expected that the participation of various Caribbean institutions like INSMET, UWI, CCCC and the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology in this global project will allow the generation of new and more abundant information.