Brazil's emergence at the regional export leader in services: a case specialization in business services

Includes Bibliography

Current developments in the transport sector and future prospects

Over the past three years, talks conducted at the subregional level have led to the signing of multimodal transport agreements, and these have been implemented by Mercosur and reviewed by the Andean Community; multimodal transport is only now starting to come into its own in South America but is already a common practice in the region covered by NAFTA. These trends continued in 1997, with consolidation being the dominant theme; on the one hand, consolidation occurred in business, with integrated services increasingly on offer, while on the other the authorities became aware of the need to promote linkages between different modes of transport. Highlights of 1998 may well include major plans for investments in intermodal infrastructure and greater interaction between users and service providers in both the public and private sectors, in order to develop regional intermodal transport systems.

A competitiveness index for the regions of a country

Includes bibliography

Big data and open data as sustainability tools: A working paper prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

The two main forces affecting economic development are the ongoing technological revolution and the challenge of sustainability. Technological change is altering patterns of production, consumption and behaviour in societies; at the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure the sustainability of these new patterns because of the constraints resulting from the negative externalities generated by economic growth and, in many cases, by technical progress itself. Reorienting innovation towards reducing or, if possible, reversing the effects of these externalities could create the conditions for synergies between the two processes. Views on the subject vary widely: while some maintain that these synergies can easily be created if growth follows an environmentally friendly model, summarized in the concept of green growth, others argue that production and consumption patterns are changing too slowly and that any technological fix will come too late. These considerations apply to hard technologies, essentially those used in production. The present document explores the opportunities being opened up by new ones, basically information and communication technologies, in terms of increasing the effectiveness (outcomes) and efficiency (relative costs) of soft technologies that can improve the way environmental issues are handled in business management and in public policy formulation and implementation.

Report of the expert group meeting on the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Pertnership Agreement

On 15 October 2008, the European Union (EU) and the CARIFORUM Group of Countries – the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Dominican Republic – assembled in Barbados to commemorate the beginning of a new chapter in their economic relationship by signing the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) after four and a half years of negotiation. In signing the Agreement, a joint declaration was also issued calling for a comprehensive, five-yearly review of the Agreement in order to determine its impact, including the costs and consequences of its implementation. During negotiations between the parties to the Agreement, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean undertook several studies directed at examining the implications of the EPA for the region as well as informing the process for the preparation of an implementation plan for CARIFORUM. The possible gender implications were also considered in collaboration with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).