Latin America: Total factor productivity and its components

This article applies the stochastic-frontier model to examine total factor productivity (tfp) and its components in Latin America between 1960 and 2010. The likelihood-ratio test shows that, for a selection of Latin American countries over the 50 years analysed, the macroeconomic variables of technical inefficiency included in the model generally have a significant effect; and they allow for a better understanding of technical inefficiency throughout the region. The key variables explaining technical inefficiency in the selected countries are public expenditure and the inflation rate; and there is also an inverse relation between technical inefficiency and the extent to which local prices diverge from purchasing power parity.

Informe del Seminario Regional sobre Sistemas Ambientales y Estrategias para Ampliar la Frontera Agropecuaria en América Latina = Report of the Regional Seminar on Environmental Systems and Strategies for Extending the Agricultural Frontier in Latin America

Contiene los antecedentes y el resumen de los debates del seminario que tuvo como propósito hacer un aporte a la ejecución del proyecto del mismo nombre cuyo objetivo básico es propiciar metodologías viables que tiendan a disminuir el costo ecológico de las transformaciones y a formar silvoagrosistemas sustentables, y que puedan ser utilizados por los planificadores y encargados de proyectos de desarrollo agrícola y regional en áreas de expansión de frontera agropecuaria.

Informe del Seminario Regional sobre Expansión de la Frontera Agropecuaria y Medio Ambiente en América Latina = Report of the Regional Seminar on the Expansion of the Agricultural Frontier and the Environment in Latin America

Informe del Seminario efectuado para analizar las caracteristicas de la expansion de la frontera agropecuaria en la region y su relacion con el estilo de desarrollo predominante, resaltando los aspectos ambientales y sociales del proceso, para recomendar politicas de desarrollo optativas que permitan realizar el proceso de expansion aludido minimizando el costo ambiental y social. Incluye lista de participantes y de documentos presentados.

A new frontier for Caribbean convergence: integration without borders

Today, forty years since its birth, the Caribbean integration has reached its limit.1 2 Consequently, there is urgent need to respond to the current realities and emerging global trends — which require greater engagement from the public, students, academics and policymakers — in moving the Caribbean Community towards a new trajectory of Caribbean convergence. The immediate concern is to devise ways of improving the convergence process among Latin American and Caribbean countries. This convergence process will have to be sensitive to both current and emerging global dynamics. This paper presents the roadmap of a new trajectory towards Caribbean convergence, sensitive to both current and emergent regional and global trends. It begins in Section I by identifying the emerging international political and economic trends that provide a backdrop against which the discussion on Caribbean convergence is squarely placed. Section II discusses the need for a new strategy of convergence, and provides the conceptual framework of Caribbean convergence. Section III spells out the pillars, strategies and delivery mechanisms of Caribbean convergence, and highlights the role of Trinidad and Tobago in this process. The paper concludes by pointing out the urgent need for a regional synergy of economic logic and political logic.