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Front-of-package food labelling (FOPL) is a mechanism to inform consumers on food nutrients content and risks for health. Each country, within its own institutional framework, defines methods and protocols to formulate rules capable of influencing organizations and the behavior of agents. The paper aims at evaluating the role of some meso-institutions in shaping arenas for policymaking on FOPL based on an exploratory study in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. A documental analysis and literature review were employed, followed by in-depth interviews. The relevant aspects of FOPL assessed were thresholds for sugar, fats, and sodium; marketing restrictions, and timeframe given for compliance with the new rules. The contribution of this article is to illuminate the way in which meso-institutions operate in a specific context, namely the development of food labelling standards. The focus is to find the rules that allowed the participation of stakeholders in the process of defining normative acts intended to regulate food labelling. The discussion of mandatory FOPL can be interpreted as a struggle to define proper rights for the food industry and the consumer. Meso-institutions, as translators of general normative principles in specific contexts, can encourage or restrict stakeholder participation in policymaking. Besides political arena, the participation can be done in other arenas, such as legislature, regulatory agencies, scientific community, media and public opinion. Institutions that encourage stakeholder participation increase the probability of obtaining widely accepted specific rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: this paper aims to describe the first phase of a project whose general goal was to develop a consensus-based set of advanced practice nurse competencies applicable to Latin American countries and, based on these competencies, produce an advanced practice nurse curricular prototype adapted to Latin American countries. The project was framed in a competency-based approach to advanced practice nursing education. The specific aims of the first phase of the project described in this paper were: 1) to identify a set of potential advanced practice nurse competencies that would serve as the template for Core Advanced Practice Nurse Competencies in Latin American countries and 2) to establish consensus for Core Advanced Practice Nurse Competencies in Latin American countries. Method: advanced practice nurse competencies were derived from a comprehensive review of published competencies and informed the development of a survey designed to assess the relevance of advanced practice nurse competencies in Latin American countries. The survey was distributed to nurse leaders and nurse educators. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: consensus for Core Competencies was established. Conclusion: the Core Advanced Practice Nurse Competencies presented can provide a structured framework to build educational programs aligned to the needs of the regional environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy coordination and fiscal multipliers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. To do so, we first look at the theoretical framework of the New Consensus Macroeconomics (NCM), and then analyze the trends in the four countries for variables including consumption, investment, government spending, and interest rates. Finally, we present an estimate of the spending and monetary multipliers with proxy variables. The contribution of this paper consists of one, showing the inexistence of the crowding out effect, and two, quantifying the multipliers for the aforementioned countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial adoption of solar rooftop systems in the residential sector resulting from the implementation of net metering policies can lead to worsening socioeconomic inequalities. This is because of the lack of information on the socioeconomic profiles of distributed solar generators. To fill this information gap and shed light on the determinants of solar photovoltaic distributed generation uptake, this paper aims to identify the profile of the first adopters of solar PV distributed generation by merging different databases. Using multilevel regression analysis, this study investigates how socioeconomic factors, project viability, and neighborhood variables, matter for adopting solar PV distributed generation in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Results differ across countries, as institutional frameworks matter. In Brazil, adopters live in urban areas and are highly responsive to solar energy potential. In Chile, the size of the project matters. Finally, in Mexico, results show that demonstration effects play a crucial role in adoption. Income as a determining factor is inconclusive. Average spending on electricity matters in all countries. This study highlights the existence of heterogeneity in the distribution of solar distributed generators. To mitigate these distortions, this work suggests some recommendations to improve solar distribution net metering policies in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. • Some residential solar PVDG policies can exacerbate pre-existing socio-economic inequalities. • Socioeconomic factors, project viability, and neighborhood effects, matter for solar PVDG adoption. • Profile of solar PVDG adopters vary considerably by country. • Solar PVDG polices need to take adopters' characteristics into account to be more inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between theory and qualitative research has been extensively examined in the literature and has emerged as a problematic matter. This debate has been driven forward mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries and has done scant justice to an understanding of these issues in regions of the South. This paper addresses this matter by drawing on a geopolitical perspective. The study here provides an analysis of 24 papers by Latin-American researchers in higher education, as included in the Web of Science between 2006 and 2015. Theories in Latin America are mainly produced in the North and exhibit two patterns: (i) critical perspectives are used to address local problems -- 'epistemic problematization'; and (ii) a nuancing of Northern theories so as to contextualize them -- 'epistemic nuancing'. Suggestions are also made for a new configuration of knowledge production in higher education studies -- a model of knowledge from and for the South.

Priority setting is the process through which a country's health system establishes the drugs, interventions, and treatments it will provide to its population. Our study evaluated the priority-setting legal instruments of Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, and Mexico to determine the extent to which each reflected the following elements: transparency, relevance, review and revision, and oversight and supervision, according to Norman Daniels's accountability for reasonableness framework and Sarah Clark and Albert Wale's social values framework. The elements were analyzed to determine whether priority setting, as established in each country's legal instruments, is fair and justifiable. While all four countries fulfilled these elements to some degree, there was important variability in how they did so. This paper aims to help these countries analyze their priority-setting legal frameworks to determine which elements need to be improved to make priority setting fair and justifiable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between the financial instability generated by shortterm capital flows in the absence of control mechanisms and the restrictions facing the implementation of counter-cyclical fiscal policies in the inflation-targeting regime, using as a springboard the recent financial crises in, specifically, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, showing how an increase in the issuance of public bonds to, via interventions in the exchange rate market, sterilize the effects of short-term capital flows on the monetary base is a source of endogenous instability, because this mechanism entails risks for the exchange rate and interest rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper aims to evaluate and discuss the digital competence of academics at universities, to identify challenges and define recommendations for policy. This study was conducted through collaboration between the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission and Metared of the Universia Foundation, surveying 30,407 participants who present the perceptions of their own digital competence levels. These self-reflections took place in universities in seven countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Portugal, and used the Check-In tool, which consists of 22 questions based on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators--or 'DigCompEdu' framework. A descriptive statistical analysis was performed, followed by a qualitative evaluation. Almost 70% of the academics have an average intermediate level of competence when the data is aggregated, with results varying in each DigCompEdu area according to the specific question asked. There is no significant difference between young and senior academics, as well as between men and women. The results present a discussion of whether the age and gender of educators and their work environment have an impact on their digital competence level, and at the same time highlights the areas in which educators perceive themselves to be most and least competent. It shows how the amount of institutional support that is offered affects the academics' perceptions of their level of digital competence. On the basis of the results, recommendations are presented for higher-education institutions, with the aim of supporting the professional development of their academics.

Purpose: This paper aims to present an approach to achieve accessible and inclusive Virtual Education for all, but especially intended for students with disabilities. This work proposes main steps to take into consideration for stakeholders involved in the educational process related to an inclusive e-Learning. Design/methodology/approach: The paper pays particular regard to accessibility in Virtual Education. This work is based on the activities prepared from years 2012 to 2015 within the initiative called ESVI-AL. This initiative was carried out in conjunction with Latin American and European Universities; for this paper, experiences and best practices from the initiative were used to prepare the proposed approach. Findings: The aim of ESVI-AL initiative was to offer products that can help in the development of an accessible and inclusive e-Learning education. Among the main results were reports, case studies, practical guidelines, training courses and software to install virtual campuses with accessibility features. Social implications: Nowadays, few countries have laws promoting and enforcing accessibility for e-Education and e-Society. This work aims to sensitize educators from different countries and raise awareness on the importance of working together toward an inclusive society based on accessible e-Learning. Originality/value: Based on a literature review and ESVI-AL initiative results, a descriptive overview was prepared as a starting point for the four identified main actors of an educational project, namely, educators, technical staff, quality auditors and students, with special emphasis on students with disabilities.

Latin American countries have evolved over the years. Still, after years of military reign, socioeconomicinstability, and civil wars, the region has been known for its anti-hegemonic economic growth (educationalpolicies) strategies. Central and South America's educational system has long been under investigation by researchers both theoretically and empirically. The transition of its education system through the introduction of centralized, liberalized, and populist ideology has sparked many researchers' interest. This paper aims to understand and compare 14 Latin American countries' education orientation. The study uses a matrix table to visualize the qualitative finding.

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

This paper characterizes household spending in education using microdata from income and expenditure surveys for twelve Latin American and Caribbean countries and the United States. Bahamas, Chile, and Mexico have the highest household spending in education and Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay have the lowest. Tertiary education is the most important form of spending, and most educational spending is performed for 18- to 23-year-old individuals. More educated and wealthier household heads spend more in the education of household members. Households with both parents present and those with a female main income provider spend more than their counterparts. Urban households also spend more than rural households. On average, education in Latin America and the Caribbean is a luxury good, whereas it may be a necessity in the United States. No gender bias is found in primary education, but at secondary school age and up households invest more in females than in males.

In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of an extra year of schooling on mathematics performance for seven Latin American countries based on PISA 2012. To that end we exploit exogenous variation in students' birthdates around the school entry cut-off date using both sharp and fuzzy Regression Discontinuity designs. We find strong effects of an extra year of schooling in most countries, which amount to a 30% increase in PISA test scores in Brazil, 18% in Uruguay, 7% in Argentina and 6% in Costa Rica. These effects differ from the typical estimates obtained from simple regressions or multilevel models and are large enough to allow 15-year-old students to reach higher proficiency levels, suggesting significant potential gains of reducing dropout rates in the region. Finally, we stress the importance of taking into account the effects of school entry cut-off dates on PISA samples to avoid making unfair international comparisons.

In recent decades, many Latin American governments have implemented policies to expand opportunities in higher education, aiming at reducing discrimination and social inequalities. These policies have taken different forms, according to the peculiarities of the respective higher education systems. The purpose of this paper is to explore the scope and limitations of these policies. We develop our analysis of theoretical literature on the subject, and review empirical information available from secondary sources of recent experience in five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela. Argentina has increased opportunities for disadvantaged social sectors by expanding the public sector. Brazil has attempted to improve access for ethnic and social minorities in both public and private institutions. Chile is a unique case because of the continuing commitment to allow market forces to shape higher education. In Mexico, increased opportunities for access have resulted from the creation of intercultural universities and technical institutions in the public sector, as well as through growth in the private sector. Finally, in Venezuela, expansion occurred through the creation of a new system of universities that operates in parallel to traditional public institutions. We note that, in all cases, the policies reflect an underlying belief that there are only benefits to unlimited expansion, without regard to possible consequences, such as an excess of university graduates in economies with limited job opportunities for them. Moreover, these policies do not take into consideration the deficit of cultural and educational capital of young people who come from the most marginalised social sectors, deficits that may hinder their success. Concepts such as 'overeducation' or 'credencialism' call into question that optimistic belief and explain the limitations of the coverage expansion in terms of real democratisation.

Fitting Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) models to incidence data is problematic when not all infected individuals are reported. Assuming an underlying SIR model with general but known distribution for the time to recovery, this paper derives the implied differential-integral equations for observed incidence data when a fixed fraction of newly infected individuals are not observed. The parameters of the resulting system of differential equations are identifiable. Using these differential equations, we develop a stochastic model for the conditional distribution of current disease incidence given the entire past history of reported cases. We estimate the model parameters using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte-Carlo sampling of the posterior distribution. We use our model to estimate the transmission rate and fraction of asymptomatic individuals for the current Coronavirus 2019 outbreak in eight American Countries: the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Panama, from January 2020 to May 2021. Our analysis reveals that the fraction of reported cases varies across all countries. For example, the reported incidence fraction for the United States of America varies from 0.3 to 0.6, while for Brazil it varies from 0.2 to 0.4., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Teacher-endorsed supporting behaviors present themselves as key influencers of student adaptive academic and social functions. The objective of this paper was twofold. First, this study sought to test a model in which student-perceived autonomy support was associated with group cohesion, considering the mediating role of basic psychological needs satisfaction and intrinsic motivation. Second, the current study examined the dimensionality of the model across five Western countries, namely Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. A convenience sample of 3033 college students ( M age = 21.51 ± SD = 3.71) were recruited for the analysis. The results revealed that perceived autonomy support was positively associated with needs satisfaction, being consequently associated with intrinsic motivation and, ultimately, with group cohesion. Additionally, a multigroup analysis revealed that the model was invariant across college students from the different countries. The current results are discussed around the promotion of teacher uses of autonomy-supportive behaviors fostering adaptive outcomes in students regarding positive social relations and that the cultures of Ibero-American countries are equivalent in this process., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.