Segmenting the Italian coffee market: marketing opportunities for economic agents working along the international coffee chain

Globalization, either directly or indirectly (e.g. through structural adjustment reforms), has called for profound changes in the previously existing institutional order. Some changes adversely impacted the production and market environment of many coffee producers in developing countries resulting in more risky and less remunerative coffee transactions. This paper focuses on customization of a tropical commodity, fair-trade coffee, as an approach to mitigating the effects of worsened market conditions for small-scale coffee producers in less developed countries. fair-trade labeling is viewed as a form of “de-commodification” of coffee through product differentiation on ethical grounds. This is significant not only as a solution to the market failure caused by pervasive information asymmetries along the supply chain, but also as a means of revitalizing the agricultural-commodity-based trade of less developed countries (LDCs) that has been languishing under globalization. More specifically, fair-trade is an example of how the same strategy adopted by developed countries’ producers/ processors (i.e. the sequence product differentiation - institutional certification - advertisement) can be used by LDC producers to increase the reputation content of their outputs by transforming them from mere commodities into “decommodified” (i.e. customized and more reputed) goods. The resulting segmentation of the world coffee market makes possible to meet the demand by consumers with preference for this “(ethically) customized” coffee and to transfer a share of the accruing economic rents backward to the Fair-trade coffee producers in LDCs. It should however be stressed that this outcome cannot be taken for granted since investments are needed to promote the required institutional innovations. In Italy FTC is a niche market with very few private brands selling this product. However, an increase of FTC market share could be a big commercial opportunity for farmers in LDCs and other economic agents involved along the international coffee chain. Hence, this research explores consumers’ knowledge of labels promoting quality products, consumption coffee habits, brand loyalty, willingness to pay and market segmentation according to the heterogeneity of preferences for coffee products. The latter was assessed developing a D-efficient design where stimuli refinement was tested during two focus groups.

Migration, unemployment and trade

Migration, Unemployment and Trade focuses on the issues of migration, welfare and unemployment in a trade and development framework. Several chapters of the book analyze the implications of internal labor mobility in a model designed to highlight its implications for regional welfare, urban unemployment, rural-urban dichotomy and structural adjustment. An important innovation in this work is the disaggregation of the economy and the use of separate utility functions to highlight non-homogeneity of preferences. The book also deals with international mobility of factors in different frameworks. In particular it concentrates on the highly emotive issue of legal and illegal migration. Thus this work incorporates interesting and important features of labor economics and factor mobility into trade and distortion theory.

Restructuring educational leadership in changing contexts: a local/global account of restructuring in Australia

The 1990s saw considerable structural reform in school education in many Anglophone nation states, marked by trends towards school-based, site-based, self-managing and self-governing schools. This article illustrates through a case study of educational restructuring in Victoria, Australia, how leadership, as a discursive practice, is redefined in the context of spatial and cultural restructuring. Restructuring produced a spatial redistribution of educational provision and individual opportunities as a result of structural adjustment reforms. These same policy moves towards post-welfarism also produced cultural shifts in attitudes to education with the rise of the new instrumentalism and entrepeneurialism. For school principals at the forefront of self managing schools, this meant shifts in resource distribution through new policy mechanisms of managerial and market accountability, and also new priorities impacting on leadership practices with a move from dialogic to decisional modes of management. The question is how recent policy moves towards learning networks and reinventing systematic support with a focus on locational disadvantage are addressing what were increased educational disparities between schools and students. Does this provide scope for more equity-driven leadership practices?

The contribution of human capital towards economic growth in China

The major theme is the structural transformational growth of China's economy. Aggregate measures of human capital has had no effect on either provincial output levels or growth rates. When human capital has been disaggregated, vocational education is the only category of human capital which has a positive effect.

O ajuste fiscal nos estados 1998-2007

O presente projeto de pesquisa analisa o ajuste fiscal nos estados nos últimos dez anos. Existe um amplo consenso de que esse grande avanço fiscal ocorreu principalmente em decorrência Lei nº 9.496/97, que vinculou a renegociação das dívidas estaduais com a implementação de um amplo programa de saneamento financeiro, assim como, pela promulgação da Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (LRF). O estudo mostra que , como regra geral, o padrão de ajuste fiscal implementado na maioria dos estados foi marcado principalmente, por um forte aumento das receitas tributárias. A contribuição do controle das despesas foi bastante limitada o que resultou em um padrão de ajuste fiscal de má qualidade, já a obtenção de crescentes superávits primários resultaram essencialmente do aumento da carga tributária.

Barbados: public-private sector partnership

Includes bibliography

Apertura y cambio estructural de la economía brasileña

Incluye Bibliografía

New directions for development banking in the Caribbean: financing to take advantage of unlimited supplies of labour skills and entrepreneurship

Includes bibliography

Growth, distributive justice and social policy

Includes bibliography

Job-seeking strategies in Trinidad and Tobago

Includes bibliography

Trade and investment flows between the Caribbean and the rest of the hemisphere in the context of the FTAA

Includes bibliography

The Netherlands Antilles: trade and integration with CARICOM

Introduction The Netherlands Antilles is an autonomous entity within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and comprises a federation of five Caribbean islands: Bonaire and Curacao (the Leeward islands) which comprise 80 per cent of the population of 211,000 and Saba, St. Eustatius and the southern part of St. Maarten (the Windward islands). Like the other countries in the Kingdom, it enjoys full autonomy in internal matters as, for example, education, public health, justice and customs. It has a per capita income of about US$ 12,000. The Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands account for about 75 per cent (Curacao (70 per cent) and Bonaire (5 per cent)) and 25 percent respectively of the economy of the Netherlands Antilles. The Netherlands Antilles has its own currency, the Netherlands guilder, which is pegged to the United States dollar at a fixed rate since 1971. The economy has some unique features that stem from its close relations with the Netherlands, its undiversified nature and heavy dependence on tourism, offshore finance, oil refining and shipping, the high share of trade (exports of goods and services of about 75 per cent of GDP), its geographical characteristics, its common border with the French Republic on St. Maarten, its duty-free access for imports from Aruba, its de facto free trade zone (FTZ), partial dollarization, especially for the Windward Islands, and its highly regulated labor market (1). Adverse economic shocks in the last two decades affected particularly the offshore financial sector and the oil refinery and, to a lesser extent, tourism. The repeal of withholding taxes in the United States in the 1980s indirectly caused the collapse of a number of highly profitable offshore financial activities in Curacao, leading to significant drops in government revenue and contributions to foreign exchange earnings. The withdrawal of Shell from Curacao in 1986 and the (temporary) closure of the oil refinery which had been a mainstay of the Curacao economy for almost three quarters of a century was the second major shock. It was subsequently leased to the Venezuelan State Company, Petroleos de Venezuela Sociedad Anonima (PDVSA), which resumed operations and preserved employment. In the 1990s, the Windward Islands were bit by several devastating hurricanes, which destroyed much of the economic infrastructure on the islands, including about half of the number of available hotel rooms in St Maarten. Further negative shocks were related to the discontinuation of certain trade privileges on European markets for Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs), the withdrawal by the Netherlands of certain tax privileges for Dutch pensioners residing in the Netherlands Antilles and disruptions in the availability of Solidarity Fund resources for the smaller islands. National income has been on the decline since 1997. GDP declined by about 6 per cent between 1997 and 1999. Underlying fiscal imbalances and structural weaknesses have also impacted negatively on the economy. In recent years, with recession high unemployment and migration have been experienced (2). The Netherlands Antilles has been able to survive thanks to additional aid from the Netherlands, large-scale spontaneous emigration (mostly to the Netherlands), some drop in international reserves, an increase in domestic debt and arrears and reduced outlays for the maintenance of public assets. From 1986 onwards, successive efforts at restoring macroeconomic balance, particularly with regard to public finance, were made, but were unsuccessful. Adjustment was also attempted in 1996 and 1997, but failed to meet the desired targets. In 1999, the government launched a new National Recovery Plan" (NRP). The NRP contains important medium-term structural adjustment measures aimed at restoring macroeconomic balance and conditions for revitalizing the economy. The NRP subsequently served as an important input into a comprehensive adjustment plan drawn up with the assistance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and reflected in the government's Memorandum of Economic Policies dated 15 September 2000. Beyond restoring macroeconomic balance and reforming the economic incentive framework, the government aims at establishing a Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) for the formulation and implementation of a sustainable long-term growth strategy. It is against the above background that this study is undertaken. Its main objective is to assess the integration options facing the Netherlands Antilles (3) vis-a-vis the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). A secondary objective is to examine the above taking into account, inter alia, the level of trade between the Netherlands Antilles and CARICOM, the barriers to trade between the two groups of countries and the requirements for increasing trade between the two groups of countries. The Consultant was given an initial Draft Terms of Reference (Annex 1) with the intention of modifying it in the course of the interviews with all the stakeholders. The main idea that emerged from these interviews was a concern with some possible form of association with CARICOM. The Consultant was asked to exam the costs and benefits of various forms of association and to recommend an option. This adjustment of the Terms of Reference (TOR) was substantial and involved the Consultant having to do some interviews and collect documentation in CARICOM. The study essentially revolves around the search for a road map for the Netherlands Antilles. It is tackled in the first instance by describing the existing system of trade of the Netherlands Antilles with a view to determining the import and export structures and the specific nature and extent of trade in goods and services between the Netherlands Antilles and CARICOM. 1 Netherlands Antilles: Elements of a Strategy for Economic Recovery and Sustainable Growth. Interim Report of the World Bank Mission, 5-20 December 2000. 2 IMF, IMF Country Report No. 01/73 Kingdom of the Netherlands-Netherlands Antilles-Recent Development, Selected Issues and Statistical Appendix. May 2001 3 The Netherlands Antilles is a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It contains five islands. Curacao and Bonaire (Leewards) and St Eustatius, Saba and St Maarten (The Windwards)"

Políticas macroeconómicas, distribución y pobreza en el Ecuador

Incluye Bibliografía

Revista de la CEPAL no.88

Vigencia de los aportes de Celso Furtado al estructuralismo / Ricardo Bielschowsky. -- Obsolescencia de la protección a los inversores extranjeros después de la crisis argentina / Michael Mortimore y Leonardo Stanley. -- Una aproximación al enfoque de derechos en las estrategias y políticas de desarrollo / Víctor Abramovich. -- ¿Pueden los países de América Latina y el Caribe emular el modelo irlandés para atraer inversión extranjera directa? / Ruth Ríos-Morales y David O ’Donovan. -- El lento retorno de las políticas industriales en América Latina y el Caribe / Wilson Peres. -- Un modelo de bajo crecimiento: la informalidad como restricción structural / Mario Cimoli, Annalisa Primi y Maurizio Pugno. -- El mercado de trabajo argentino en la globalización financier / Mario Damill y Roberto Frenkel. -- Precariedad social en México y Argentina: tendencias, expresiones y trayectorias nacionales / María Cristina Bayón. -- Pacto Fiscal en Guatemala: lecciones de una negociación / Juan Alberto Fuentes K. y Maynor Cabrera. -- Cambio de la estructura productiva en Chile, 1986-1996: producción e interdependencia industrial / José Miguel Albala-Bertrand. -- Orientaciones para los colaboradores de la Revista de la CEPAL. -- La Revista de la CEPAL en Internet. -- Publicaciones recientes de la CEPAL.

CEPAL Review no.88

Celso Furtado’s contributions to structuralism and their relevance today / Ricardo Bielschowsky. -- Has investor protection been rendered obsolete by the Argentine crisis? / Michael Mortimore and Leonardo Stanley. -- The rights-based approach in development policies and strategies / Victor Abramovich. -- Can the Latin American and Caribbean countries emulate the Irish model of FDI attraction? / Ruth Rios-Morales and David O’Donovan. -- The slow comeback of industrial policies in Latin America and the Caribbean / Wilson Peres. -- A low-growth model: informality as a structural constraint / Mario Cimoli, Annalisa Primi and Maurizio Pugno. -- The Argentine labour market in a financially globalized world / Mario Damill and Roberto Frenkel. -- Social precarity in Mexico and Argentina: trends, manifestations and national trajectories / María Cristina Bayón. -- The Fiscal Covenant in Guatemala: lessons learned from the negotiations / Juan Alberto Fuentes K. and Maynor Cabrera. -- Changes in Chile’s production structure, 1986-1996: output and industrial interdependence / José Miguel Albala-Bertrand. -- Guidelines for contributors to the CEPAL Review. -- CEPAL Review on the Internet. -- Recent ECLAC publications.