The United States-Central American Free Trade Agreement: fiscal implications for the Central American countries

Includes bibliography

United States-Latin America and the Caribbean trade developments, 2002

This document provides an overview of the most relevant developments in United States trade policy relating to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2002. U.S. policy continued to promote trade liberalization through advancing negotiations on multiple fronts- globally (WTO), regionally (FTAA) and bilaterally or sub regionally- with a view that the various negotiations are mutually reinforcing and seek to create a constructive competition for liberalization" among trade partners. The passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) included in the Trade Act of August 2002 enhanced the U.S. Administration's ability to negotiate trade agreements. It provided an impetus to conclude bilateral negotiations with Chile as well as to advance a number of trade agreements currently under negotiation, including negotiations toward the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and bilateral negotiations with Central America. The Trade Act also renewed the Generalized System of Preferences, extended the Caribbean Trade Partnership Act by liberalizing apparel provisions and augmented the Andean Trade Preference Act, increasing the list of duty free products. On the multilateral front, in partial fulfillment of the Doha mandate, the U.S. tabled in 2002 two comprehensive proposals for the reduction of trade barriers on agricultural and non-agricultural goods. Along with these trade liberalizing proposals, the U.S. Administration imposed temporary safeguard measures on key steel products to provide relief to the sectors of the steel industry that have been most affected by import surges. In addition, the U.S. Congress passed the 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act that substantially increased U.S. domestic farm subsidies to shield domestic farm producers from competition from subsidized products from abroad."

United States-Latin America and the Caribbean: trade developments 2003

Includes bibliography

Economic survey of the United States, 1990

Incluye Bibliografía

The United States subprime mortgage crisis and its implications for the Caribbean

The bursting of the property bubble – subprime mortgage crisis – in 2007 in the United States has engendered panic, recession fears and turmoil in the global financial system. Although the United States economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the last quarter of 2007, down from 4.9 per cent in the previous quarter, day by day worsening scenarios emerge, from escalating oil prices, to a depreciating dollar and financial institutions’ bailout by the Federal Reserve. Many economists and policy makers share the view that a subprime-led recession – i.e. two consecutive quarters with negative growth – is inevitable and will be much deeper and longer than the 2001 dot-com downturn. Moreover, the critical situation of the financial system has driven some analysts to argue that should the monetary policy response fails to restore confidence among investors, the outcome would be the worst crisis seen since the Great Depression. This pessimism is not only among specialists. Indeed, in late March 2008 the Consumer Confidence Index in the United States recorded its lowest level since February 1992. A recession in the United States will undoubtedly have an important impact on the world economy, despite the continuous rapid growth experienced by emerging economies, particularly China and India. The purpose of this article is threefold: first, to characterize the current situation in the United States economy; second, to discuss the economic policy responses; and finally, to elaborate on how Caribbean economies may be affected.

United States Trade Developments 2014-2015

United States Trade Developments, 2014-2015, provides an overview of the most relevant trade developments in the United States trade relations with Latin America and the Caribbean and the measures that inhibit the free flow of goods among countries in the Western Hemisphere.The report presents trade figures and trends over the last few years to illustrate the nature of the U.S. engagement through trade with the world and with the Latin America and Caribbean region.

A United States Information Agency e sua ação no Brasil de 1953 a 1964

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A Survery of Western United States Instream Flow Programs and The Policies that Protect a River's Ecosystem

The Western United States can best be described as a vast, varying land, with the high plains to the east and the jagged horizons of Rockies to the west. However there is one common trait shared by these states: the lack of water resources. With the continued development of this land, the fact that water is scarce is becoming more real. This issue became more difficult to handle as the public became more aware that many competing uses existed for the finite resource, and those different uses were degrading the natural environments of the surface waters. With this realization instream flow policies provides a comprehensive account of the policy framework a selected number of western states have established in order to protect instream flows and the overall health of a river's ecosystem. Also included is the identification of key policies that should be promoted or removed from a state's instream flow program. Ultimately, this thesis continues to add the the ever-evolving process of modernizing water law frameworks.

Who Suffers Most when Disease Outbreaks and Food Recalls Happen? The Case of Mad Cow Disease in the United States

It is generally observed that whenever there are cases of disease outbreaks and food recalls, such as the case of the 2003 Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE) outbreak, cattle and beef prices fall. Given these incidents, there is the question of which part of the marketing chain is the most affected. For those who produce live cattle, such as feedlot operators, the question is ‘what effect these events have on price and demand for beef and cattle?’ Similarly, how do the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) recalls and diseases such as Mad Cow Disease outbreaks affect the beef marketing margins at all levels in the U.S. beef marketing chain? Identifying these effects along the marketing chain provides insight into which level along that channel is the most vulnerable to these events. In addition, this information helps to assess the impact of such events on the industry, providing a basis for policy formulation.

Non-State United States Support For The Contras During The Reagan Era

Under President Ronald Reagan, the White House pursued a complex foreign policy towards the Contras, rebels in trying to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, in Nicaragua. In 1979, the leftist Sandinista government seized power in Nicaragua. The loss of the previous pro-United States Somoza military dictatorship deeply troubled the conservatives, for whom eradication of communism internationally was a top foreign policy goal. Consequently, the Reagan Administration sought to redress the policy of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, and assume a hard line stance against leftist regimes in Central America. Reagan and the conservatives within his administration, therefore, supported the Contra through military arms, humanitarian aid, and financial contributions. This intervention in Nicaragua, however, failed to garner popular support from American citizens and Democrats. Consequently, between 1982 and 1984 Congress prohibited further funding to the Contras in a series of legislation called the Boland Amendments. These Amendments barred any military aid from reaching the Contras, including through intelligence agencies. Shortly after their passage, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Casey and influential members of Reagan¿s National Security Council (NSC) including National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, NSC Aide Oliver North, and Deputy National Security Advisor John Poindexter cooperated to identify and exploit loopholes in the legislation. By recognizing the NSC as a non-intelligence body, these masterminds orchestrated a scheme in which third parties, including foreign countries and private donors, contributed both financially and through arms donations to sustain the Contras independently of Congressional oversight. This thesis explores the mechanism and process of soliciting donations from private individuals, recognizing the forces and actors that created a situation for covert action to continue without detection. Oliver North, the main actor of the state, worked within his role as an NSC bureaucrat to network with influential politicians and private individuals to execute the orders of his superiors and shape foreign policy. Although Reagan articulated his desire for the Contras to remain a military presence in Nicaragua, he delegated the details of policy to his subordinates, which allowed this scheme to flourish. Second, this thesis explores the individual donors, analyzing their role as private citizens in sustaining and encouraging the policy of the Reagan Administration. The Contra movement found non-state support from followers of the New Right, demonstrated through financial and organizational assistance, that allowed the Reagan Administration¿s statistically unpopular policy in Nicaragua to continue. I interpret these donors as politically involved, but politically philanthropic, individuals, donating to their charity of choice to further the principles of American freedom internationally in a Cold War environment. The thesis then proceeds to assess the balance of power between the executive and other political actors in shaping policy, concluding that the executive cannot act alone in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy.

Public Attitudes Toward Social Spending in the United States: The Differences Between Direct Spending and Tax Expenditures

This paper uses a survey experiment to examine differences in public attitudes toward 'direct' and 'indirect' government spending. Federal social welfare spending in the USA has two components: the federal government spends money to directly provide social benefits to citizens, and also indirectly subsidizes the private provision of social benefits through tax expenditures. Though benefits provided through tax expenditures are considered spending for budgetary purposes, they differ from direct spending in several ways: in the mechanisms through which benefits are delivered to citizens, in how they distribute wealth across the income spectrum, and in the visibility of their policy consequences to the mass public. We develop and test a model explaining how these differences will affect public attitudes toward spending conducted through direct and indirect means. We find that support for otherwise identical social programs is generally higher when such programs are portrayed as being delivered through tax expenditures than when they are portrayed as being delivered by direct spending. In addition, support for tax expenditure programs which redistribute wealth upward drops when citizens are provided information about the redistributive effects. Both of these results are conditioned by partisanship, with the opinions of Republicans more sensitive to the mechanism through which benefits are delivered, and the opinions of Democrats more sensitive to information about their redistributive effects.

A Historical-Institutional Study of the Welfare Systems in the United States and Sweden: Net Social Wage Approach

In this study I first look at the historical developments of the welfare systems in Sweden and the United States to understand why these countries have produced two distinct systems over the years. After understanding their historical context I turn to the question of the relationship between the welfare system and economic growth. Policy makers and the mainstream media commonly cite the critique that through government deficit and public debt, welfare systems are a drag on the economy. By calculating the net social wage, the difference in taxes paid and benefits received by workers, I test this hypothesis to see if welfare systems are self-financed by the workers. My findings demonstrate that the net social wage has been negative in the U.S. from 1962 to the early 2000s and in Sweden from 1965 to 2012. This shows that the welfare systems are entirely self-financed by the workers for the full period in Sweden and until the recent financial crisis in the U.S.

Exploring Assistance in Sweden and the United States

Few international comparisons of health services are performed using microlevel data. Using such data, this paper compares the need for and receipt of assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs) in comparable samples in the United States and Sweden, a country with a universal system of community-based services.Design and Methods: Data from national surveys of community residents completed at approximately the same time in each nation are used to create comparable measures of need and assistance. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses compare need and assistance patterns across the nations and identify individual factors that explain receipt of assistance and unmet needs.Results:Our results indicate that a simple story of greater use of paid formal services in Sweden and more unpaid informal use in the United States masks a more complex relationship. Assistance with ADLs seems to be more targeted in Sweden; narrow differences in assistance widen considerably when the analysis is limited to those reporting need. Implications:Although these two different health systems result in similar levels of overall ADL assistance, a detailed microlevel comparison reveals key distinctions. Further microlevel comparisons of access, cost, and quality in cross-national data can further aid our understanding of the consequences of health policy.

Evaluating Integration. Research contributions for a gender sensitive migration policy: Research contributions for a gender sensitive migration policy

The integration of academic and non-academic knowledge is a key concern for researchers who aim at bridging the gap between research and policy. Researchers involved in the sustainability-oriented NCCR North-South programme have made the experience that linking different types of knowledge requires time and effort, and that methodologies are still lacking. One programme component was created at the inception of this transdisciplinary research programme to support exchange between researchers, development practitioners and policymakers. After 8 years of research, the programme is assessing whether research has indeed enabled a continuous communication across and beyond academic boundaries and has effected changes in the public policies of poor countries. In a first review of the data, we selected two case studies explicitly addressing the lives of women. In both cases – one in Pakistan, the other in Nepal – the dialogue between researchers and development practitioners contributed to important policy changes for female migration. In both countries, outmigration has become an increasingly important livelihood strategy. National migration policies are gendered, limiting the international migration of women. In Nepal, women were not allowed to migrate to specific countries such as the Gulf States or Malaysia. This was done in the name of positive discrimination, to protect women from potential exploitation and harassment in domestic work. However, women continued to migrate in many other and often illegal and more risky ways, increasing their vulnerability. In Pakistan, female labour migration was not allowed at all and male migration increased the vulnerability of the families remaining back home. Researchers and development practitioners in Nepal and Pakistan brought women’s shared experience of and exposure to the mechanisms of male domination into the public debate, and addressed the discriminating laws. Now, for the first time in Pakistan, the new draft policy currently under discussion would enable broadly-based female labour migration. What can we learn from the two case studies with regard to ways of relating experience- and research-based knowledge? The paper offers insights into the sequence of interactions between researchers, local people, development practitioners, and policy-makers, which eventually contributed to the formulation of a rights-based migration policy. The reflection aims at exploring the gendered dimension of ways to co-produce and share knowledge for development across boundaries. Above all, it should help researchers to better tighten the links between the spheres of research and policy in future.

Post-9/11 Terrorism Threats, News Coverage, and Public Perceptions in the United States

Terrorists, policy-makers, and terrorism scholars have long assumed that the mere threat of terrorist strikes affects societies that have experienced actual acts of terrorism. For this reason, most definitions of terrorism include the threat of violent political acts against civilians. But so far research has neither validated this conventional wisdom nor demonstrated how actual and mass-mediated threat messages by terrorists and terror alerts and threat assessments by government officials affect the public in targeted states. This paper fills the gap providing evidence that who conveys such messages matters and that mass-mediated threat messages by al Qaeda leaders and announced alerts and threat assessments by U.S. administration officials had a significant impact on the American public’s threat perceptions in the post-9/11 years.