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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance and the relationship between competitiveness, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth and human development in 20 countries of the Latin America and Caribbean region during the 2006-2015 period. The main argument to uphold here is that – from the perspective of virtuous circle – countries with better conditions of competitiveness are those with better economic performance and with better conditions for human development.Design/methodology/approach Time series data were organized at three levels: individual countries, groups of nations and Latin America and Caribbean as a whole. Indicators used were: index of competitiveness, rates of change in real GDP and Human Development Index. Cluster analysis tests were performed: data ranges were determined and quintiles were established. Countries were ranked in five categories and comparative position matrices were determined for each variable. Linear correlations between indexes were calculated. Linear correlation coefficients were determined in terms of groups of countries and considering Latin America and Caribbean as a whole.Findings Findings revealed that decreasing conditions in competitiveness and economic growth indicators are the representative situation since 2009. The most competitive country in the region is Chile, and the weakest is Venezuela. Nevertheless, all Latin American and Caribbean countries analyzed seem to have made progress in terms of human, economic and social development. Regarding correlations, Dominican Republic showed an inverse relationship between competitiveness and economic growth, while Jamaica and Venezuela showed inverse relationships between competitiveness and human development. At the individual country level, no statistically significant relationship between economic growth and human development was detected.Research limitations/implications Findings highlight the necessity of future research that result in a deeper understanding of the transmission mechanisms between economic and social performance in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Particular reasons at the micro level that explain improvements or deteriorations in competitiveness and human development must also be analyzed. Based on the degrees of freedom, time series could have included more years, but a lack of information was found for some countries. It would also be necessary to observe each particular case considering the type of economy, production characteristics and export/import composition.Practical implications Results complement the existing literature by exploring competitiveness and its relationship with economic and social variables in developing countries. The authors also believe that this paper is relevant for macroeconomic and social policy debates involving competitiveness and human well-being in this region of the world.Originality/value This paper supports an important argument: human well-being and national development must be the ultimate goal of competitiveness. Traditional literature focuses on levels and determinants of competitiveness in developed countries, but it usually does not take into account social and human aspects of the process in developing countries. Little attention has been paid to analyze the relationship between competitiveness and socioeconomic variables in developing countries. Methods and findings of this paper complement the existing literature by studying the relationships among competitiveness, real GDP growth and human development in Latin American and Caribbean countries, using correlation analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Indicators for quality of schooling are not only relatively new in the world but also unavailable for a sizable share of the world’s population. In their absence, some proxy measures have been devised. One simple but powerful idea has been to use the schooling premium for migrant workers in the USA (Bratsberg and Terrell, 2002). The purpose of this paper is to extend this idea and compute measures for the schooling premium of immigrant workers in the USA over a span of five decades.Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors focus on the schooling premia for the Latin American and the Caribbean region and compare them to those of migrants from other regions, particularly from East Asia and Pacific, India, Northern Europe and Southern Europe, all relative to immigrants from former Soviet Republics. The available data allow us to measure such premia for workers who graduated from school, either at the secondary or tertiary levels, in their home countries between 1940 and 2010.Findings The results show that the schooling premia in Latin America have been steadily low throughout the whole period of analysis. The results stand after controlling for selective migration in different ways. This contradicts the popular belief in policy circles that the education quality of the region has deteriorated in recent years. In contrast, schooling premium in India shows an impressive improvement in recent decades, especially at the tertiary level.Originality/value In this paper, the authors extend the idea of computing schooling premium for migrant workers in the USA (Bratsberg and Terrell, 2002) and present comparative estimates of the evolution of schooling premia in 17 Latin American countries for both secondary and tertiary schooling levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the main proposals that have been made in order to estimate discount rates in emerging markets. Seven methods are used to estimate the cost of equity capital in the case of global well-diversified investors; two methods are used to estimate it in the case of imperfectly diversified local institutional investors; and one method is used to estimate the required return in the case of non-diversified entrepreneurs. Using the first nine methods, one estimates the costs of equity for all economic sectors in six Latin American emerging markets. Consistently with studies applied to other regions, a great deal of disparity is observed between the discount rates obtained across the different models, which implies that no model is better than the others. Likewise, the paper shows that Latin American markets are in a process of becoming more integrated with the world market because discount rates have decreased consistently during the first five-year period of the XXI Century. Finally, one identifies several challenges that have to be tackled to estimate discount rates and valuate investment opportunities in emerging markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the effect that weak enforceability of property rights has on the human resource practices of firms operating in hostile business environment. Design/methodology/approach - This paper questions the role of the state as the only provider of stability and guarantor of property rights and hypothesizes that it is not governments, which tend to be weak in weak institutional settings, but private firms that act as the main force behind the protection of entrepreneurial investments. The approach consists in developing a case study about a farm (Hacienda Gavilanes) in rural Colombia, Findings- It is found that incentives together with inclusive human resources practices and empowerment are among those strategic arrangements that contribute most to the survival and sustainability of the farm today in a setting where legal enforceability is precarious. The replication of this policy might not be easy, however, because it requires a profound shift in the way landowners perceive workers in rural Colombia and many other parts of the world, Originality/value- The case presented in this paper provides valuable lessons beyond Latin America for other developing countries with similarly fragile governments and economic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the changes in ownership and internationalization of the brokerage firms in Colombia as a result of the regional integration process of its stock exchange market through the Latin American Integrated Market (MILA). It proposes that the integration of stock exchanges generated transformations within the brokerage sector, and affected companies in response pursue different strategies to remain competitive in the current state of affairs. In the case of Colombia, stock exchange integration through MILA has resulted into mergers between local brokerage firms, acquisitions from both national and international companies and changes in ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to revisit and extend previous research work that examines the ADR-listing effects on the trading process of all the domestically-listed stocks in the main Latin American exchanges. The most important result is consistent with the idea of a greater isolation (from global markets) of the singly-listed stocks in the post-cross-listing period. These results persist over the cross-listing months. As expected, the cross-listed stocks become more integrated in the post-cross listing period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]