Search

Copyright of Latin American Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We use new hand-collected data from corporate filings to study the drivers of corporate capital structure adjustment. Classifying firms by their adjustment frequencies, we reveal previously unknown patterns in their reasons for financing and the financial instruments used. Some are consistent with existing theory, whereas others are understudied. Many leverage changes are outside of the firm's control (e.g., executive option exercise) or incur negligible adjustment costs (e.g., credit-line usage). This implies a lower frequency of proactive leverage adjustments than indicated by prior research using accounting data, suggesting that costs of adjustment are higher, or the benefits lower, than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La literatura sobre estructura productiva y crecimiento económico muestra la relevancia de la industria en la expansión del PIB en países desarrollados y en desarrollo. Estudios recientes indican que el sector de los servicios modernos (servicios profesionales) contribuye a la innovación, al aumento de la productividad y, en consecuencia, al crecimiento económico. Este artículo plantea una discusión teórica sobre la importancia del sector de los servicios modernos para América Latina a fin de actualizar la tesis central del enfoque estructuralista latinoamericano. Los datos indican que, aun en el contexto de una transformación productiva caracterizada por una menor participación de la manufactura y el auge del sector terciario, se perpetúa la división internacional del trabajo, sobre la base de la relación centro-periferia. Los resultados muestran que el pensamiento estructuralista resulta adecuado para explicar el persistente subdesarrollo de los países latinoamericanos desde una perspectiva centrada en la economía de servicios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that U.S. education reforms for "failing" schools are strikingly similar to a domestic Structural Adjustment Program; and that comparing the two clarifies: how K–12 schools are neoliberalized and how neoliberalism's key feature is the making of a larger yet less democratic state. The study contrasts with the scholarship claiming that reforms epitomized by the "No Child Left Behind Act" are neoliberal because they stem from interests in privatization for capital accumulation. The analysis focuses on a "failing" school navigating federal reforms in New York State, drawing on education policy, school documents, ethnography, and interviews. It shows how the neoliberal state took power from local school authorities, and largely did not shrink the state via privatization. This work illustrates how neoliberal reforms for "failing" schools are at least as much about power as they are about profits and demonstrates the large-scale continuity in neoliberal restructuring strategies and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the Jerry Rawlings military government, the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) in Ghana, framed its political agenda using liberal tropes about participatory democracy as a strategy to manufacture legitimacy and mediate political-economic crisis. The People's Defence Committees (PDCs) and Workers' Defence Committees (WDCs), created in 1981 and dissolved in 1984, were presented by the PNDC as innovative programmes aimed at nurturing citizen participation representative of the highest form of democracy. However, the introduction of these reforms came at a time when the ruling PNDC faced critical problems of legitimacy, administrative incapability and popular opposition to austerity measures associated with structural adjustment programs (SAPs). We utilise primary source material from the University of Ghana National Reconciliation Commission collection to argue that the discourses and practice of the PDCs/WDCs functioned simultaneously to violently consolidate state power, depoliticise alternatives, and manufacture legitimacy to mediate political-economic crisis while simultaneously being a vehicle for illegitimacy by providing constrained opportunities for individual nepotism, grassroots empowerment and claim-making against the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monumental changes are taking place in the Arab Middle East, raising hopes that political and economic freedoms will take hold in this troubled region. Citizens of this region have the opportunity to choose political ideologies that can fuel innovation and entrepreneurship, which ultimately can transform their economies and improve their quality of life. They will also have to connect with the rest of the world to attract talent, capital, new technology, and modern systems of management and organization. In this article, I sketch out some of these changes and the opportunities they offer management scholars. I also outline the key challenges scholars are likely to encounter and how to address them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa, like many other middle-income countries as well as most upper-income countries, has seen an increase in services and fall in manufacturing as shares of total employment. There has been speculation about the extent to which these changes actually represent a genuine structural shift, as opposed to a “statistical artifact” deriving from the domestic outsourcing of activities from manufacturing to services. Very limited evidence is available as to how much of the apparent changes in the sectoral composition of employment are explained by intersectoral outsourcing. This article develops a methodology, using household and labor survey data, to analyze the extent of intersectoral outsourcing of specific labor-intensive activities in South Africa from 1997–2007. It is shown that the relatively high growth in services employment is driven by expansion of employment of cleaners and security guards, and in particular by outsourcing-type reallocation of these activities from manufacturing and the public sector toward private services. Once outsourcing is accounted for, employment seems to have grown at similar rates in manufacturing and in private services. The analysis has implications for understanding changes in the sectoral structure of middle-income economies, and whether services employment is as dynamic as it appears to be. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article lays out several hypotheses to establish a specific link between structural economic reforms and the competitive environment of firms. We test our hypotheses on data from the steel industry in three post-reform economies. We find that economic reforms tend to have a positive effect on environmental munificence, but they also produce short-term instability in the environment. We elaborate on the implications of our results for managers, policymakers, and scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the special case of changes triggered by profound economic reforms in emerging economies, we suggest a new perspective from which to explore the relationship between environmental and organizational change. This research setting is used to explore and propose enhancements to existing theory that take into account how organizations respond to extreme forms of change. We propose a typology of environmental change that helps to interpret our findings and position our study vis-à-vis existing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many empirical studies have confirmed the theoretical prediction that longer-term Unemployment Insurance (UI) entitlement leads to longer unemployment duration. Most of those studies have examined special programs that provide extra weeks of unemployment benefits when unemployment rates in the region are higher. Hence, they must distinguish if the longer unemployment duration among UI claimants observed in these cases is due to the extended benefits or to the adverse labor market conditions that trigger those extensions. In contrast, this paper measures the effect of identical entitlement extensions across two labor markets facing very different demand conditions--Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, over the years 1980-85. The results confirm findings of the existing literature and indicate that the adverse effect of longer entitlement changes relatively little in response to variation in demand conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effects of evaluative inconsistencies in product attribute information on the strength of the resultant attitude, as manifested in its predictive ability. The existing literature makes opposing predictions regarding the effects of information inconsistency on attitude strength. We seek to resolve this dilemma by investigating the likelihood of inconsistency reconciliation—that is, whether or not people elaborate on inconsistencies with the goal of achieving an integrated evaluation. A strengthening effect should result when the processing goal is conducive to reconciliation and goal-facilitating factors are present in the environment; however, a weakening effect should be obtained when conditions are unfavorable to inconsistency reconciliation. Results from three experiments provide support for this conceptualization and offer a possible resolution of the opposing theoretical perspectives present in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the nature and extent of organizational change in the context of globalization through a longitudinal matched-pair analysis of two leading pharmaceutical companies. The structures of common process in each firm were empirically characterized over time. Findings suggest that MNCs respond to complex global competitive environments by increasing internal structural complexity, a systematically differentiated structural response to relevant process subenvironments. Though supporting the existence of characteristics associated with projected MNC models, the study showed systematic variations in these characteristics across internal structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe has seen increasing steps taken to try to insulate economic decision-making from democratic influence. However, this trend, while in line with the foundation charters of ordoliberalism, is by no means confined to Europe or to ordoliberalism. Significant and ongoing attempts to preclude the population from influencing economic policy are global in nature and are characteristic of all forms of neoliberalism and of capitalist governance more generally. Structural adjustment in the Global South in the 1980s and 1990s provides a more helpful model for how the crisis has been responded to in Europe than the often Eurocentric conceptions of (and specious claims made for) ordoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Set across Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of turning India into a $ 5 trillion economy by 2024, the ongoing economic slowdown in the country presents a formidable challenge, acting as a surprise speed breaker in India's successful growth story. On Friday 08 November 2019, International ratings agency, Moody's Investors Service, cut India's rating to 'negative 'from 'stable'. The cut in rating dealt a blow to the Indian economy, raising doubts about the economic prospects of the country and effectiveness of government policies. The purpose of this paper is to study the salient features of the slowdown in the Indian economy and analyze Moody's recent credit rating report on India to find out if it is justified in presenting a negative outlook for the country. The common view held by the government as well as prominent Industrialists and others is that the change in India's ratings by Moody's Investor Service to 'negative' from 'stable' is incomplete in its assessment. The government of India is successfully managing the effects of the economic slowdown in the country by taking effective measures. It has introduced structural reforms in banking, finance, real estate and taxation and also taken policy decisions to arrest the slowdown and revive the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bodija market is the largest informal foodstuff market in Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria. At its inception in the 1980s, leadership of the market space followed long-standing Yoruba tradition, prioritizing the role of older women. This pattern of leadership continued until the mid-1990s, when former government workers, laid off upon implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), moved into the market as traders and eventually as the leaders and market "technocrats." As a consequence of this, the market women who had held informally recognized leadership positions were sidelined. This development also redefined class within the market structure. The new leaders have impacted the market administration by incorporating symbols of elitism in their leadership style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economy analyses of agricultural and food security policies in Malawi have emphasized the role played by domestic politics and, more specifically, the centralization of power in the executive. This paper builds on this perspective by exploring the view that such policies are in fact negotiated outcomes of interactions at the state-donor interface. Using interview data gathered from expert key informants and a review of publicly available data, the paper explores how certain policy drivers have interacted to shape agricultural and food security policies in Malawi. The results reveal that policy processes in the recent past have been driven and mediated by fiscal considerations, sociopolitical pressures, and pragmatism, which accounts for the unique and complex peculiarities of the Malawi context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The aim of this paper is the development of an integrated framework, based on environmental input-output analysis, for optimizing the economic structure of an economy. The restructuring process is approached as a constraint optimization problem where the optimized variables are the elements of the matrix of domestic technical coefficients. A method for determining the optimal level of the productive linkages of an economy in order to maximize its output with the minimal greenhouse gas emissions the possible is suggested. The proposed methodology is able to join both environmental and economic policy targets, in the form of predefined constraints. The objective function, which is going to be minimized, expresses the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) intensity or GHG emissions per unit of output. A particle swarm algorithm is employed for the solution of the optimization problem. An illustrative application to the Greek economy was carried out. The experimental results revealed that if the Greek economy will apply policies for boosting the sectors of high and medium-high R&D intensity, then the greenhouse gas emission per unit of gross domestic product of Greece would be reduced. Furthermore, the promotion of high and medium-high R&D intensity sectors is connected with an important improvement of the production linkages to a wide range of sectors, highlighting the important spillover effect of the suggested restructuring process. Highlights • An economic restructuring framework based on input-output analysis is introduced. • The matrix of technical coefficients is optimized by using a particle swarm optimizer. • The optimized economic structure has minimum greenhouse gas emissions intensity. • A demonstrative application to the Greek economy is provided. • The results highlight the sectors of the economy that need refining, quantitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If Tunisia is hailed as a success story with its high rankings on economic, educational, and other indicators relative to other Arab countries, the popular 2011 uprisings underscored the fragility of its main economic pillars, including those of tourism and foreign direct investment. This paper examines the economic impact of migrants' remittances, which are expected to exhibit relatively countercyclical behaviour during periods of intense upheaval. This study is novel in its methodological approach, which is used to pinpoint the dynamic effects of remittances on key macroeconomic variables within an unstable framework. The analysis reveals that the effect of remittances on Tunisia's economy has varied over time. Prior to the Arab Spring, remittances had a short‐term negative influence on economic growth, varying effects on domestic investment and positive impacts on consumption. In considering the post‐Arab uprisings, positive and strong impacts of remittances on growth and consumption are found in the long run while negative and moderate investment effects of remittances are shown over the short and medium term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents all components of the structural and convergence funds created by the European Union and designed to reduce the gap between developed countries and emerging ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peri-urban land governance in Tanzania and other developing countries is shaped by divergent or complimentary roles of actors emanating from their authority, power and interest which create a complex relationship affecting land governance process. This paper is built on a call for more research on governance and urban land use by scholars. The focus of this paper is to identify governance gaps arising from the roles of different actors, interaction and power relations. The paper is based on the critical review of published and unpublished literature, as well as government reports. Overlapping and complementary roles influenced by varying power relations and interests among actors is revealed. This is witnessed in the Ministry of Lands and Local Government Authorities (LGAs) and between the private sector and land occupiers. The former is associated with the ministry's reluctance to share power with LGAs, perpetuated by conflicting laws and regulations, while the latter is attributed to economic power of investors versus the vulnerable groups. Recognising the implication of the participation of various actors is not only critical in improving the interactions and harmony among actors, but also enacting appropriate legal and institutional frameworks to regularise both formal and informal actors in order to improve peri-urban land governance henceforth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An objective for each developed state remains the improvement of a suitable fiscal management system that could generate an increased level of resources. Further on, planning, distributing, allocating those resources to the proper beneficiaries, could generate an economic stabilization, suitable economic growth, decreased level of the net lending variable. The study consisted in an empirical research throughout it was developed the analysis of the impact of fiscal strategies and public expenses adjustments on economic growth and budgetary balance. Time series data from 1998 to 2018 were used on the empirical evidence over the European countries. The study developed an econometric model represented by an unbalanced panel data analysis having as independent variables: the variance of direct taxes, the dynamics of indirect taxes, the variance of budgetary balance, the variance of tax burden, the dynamics of change in net lending as percent of gross domestic product. The dependent variable was revealed throughout the variance of gross domestic product per capita. Over 588 time series observations and 28 cross-section data were taken into consideration in order to reveal if either revenue-adjustments or public-spending adjustments had a greater influence on the evolution of economic growth over the EU-Countries. The result of the econometric model exposed a positive correlation between total expenditure, budgetary balance and economic growth and a negative correlation between direct taxes, indirect taxes, tax burden and economic growth. Moreover, by generating dummy variables on the fixed effect model, it was revealed that large fiscal improvements had a less positive effect on the development of economic growth than fiscal adjustments based on medium-size consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutional and policy features of Eurozone represent a field of special interest to analyse the process of integration. The aim of this study is to investigate on the existence of a trade-off between the compliance to fiscal rules and trust as a proxy of institutional legitimacy in Eurozone. At this scope, the relation between trust in the European Central Bank (ECB) and structural adjustment, together with unemployment and inflation in 11 Eurozone countries from 1999 to 2013, is tested. The empirical results showed that: (i) discretionary policy measures have an opposite sign impact on trust; (ii) in peripheral countries, the structural adjustment is the main variable affecting trust in ECB; (iii) unemployment plays a key role; and (iv) deviation from the objective of 2% of inflation is not significant. These outcomes prove the existence of a trade-off between the fiscal rules commitments and the European institutional consolidation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around one‐third of Australia's coal‐fired power stations closed between 2012 and 2017, with most of the remainder expected to close over coming decades. Current investment in generation capacity is primarily in the form of alternative power, especially wind and solar. In this paper, we conduct an event study to assess the local unemployment effects of Australia's coal‐fired power station closures, an issue of considerable interest given the prominence of coal‐fired power stations in local economies. Our analysis uses monthly regional labour force survey data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We find that on average there has been an increase in local unemployment of around 0.7 percentage points after closures of coal‐fired power stations, an effect that tends to persist beyond the months immediately after closures. The findings raise questions about appropriate policy responses for dealing with local structural adjustment issues facing coal‐reliant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross‐border dispersion of different stages/slices of the production processes within vertically integrated global industries ("global production sharing") has been a key structural change in the global economy in recent decades. This paper examines India's experience with exploiting opportunities created by this phenomenon for export expansion from a comparative East Asian perspective. The analysis reveals that India has so far failed fitting into global production networks in electronics and electrical goods, which have been the prime movers of export dynamism in China and the other high‐performing East Asian countries. The findings of this study provide further support to the case for completing the unfinished reform agenda, encompassing both trade and investment policy reforms, and "behind‐the‐border" reforms. There is also a strong case, based on the experiences in East Asia and elsewhere, for combining further reforms with a proactive investment promotion campaign to attract multinational enterprises engaged in global production networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the key elements of Modinomics, defined as "everyone's participation, everyone's progress." It investigates the reasons why Modinomics was necessary, the key elements of Modinomics, and how this policy was implemented. It argues that India's economic policy has had continuity since the economic reform package of 1991, so Modinomics has involved a high component of better implementation. Nevertheless, there have been some major policy changes as well. The paper discusses the deep structural reforms of demonetization and a Goods and Services Tax as well the new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act. The paper examines the record of economic growth under Modi as well as new welfare and employment programs to make economic growth more inclusive. Finally, the paper examines the medium and long‐term growth prospects for India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The paper presents a new index of structural modernisation. • The index combines two dimensions: structural change and technological catch-up. • The index is calculated for 114 countries over a long period from 1960 to 2014. • The paper elaborates a method for identifying development traps. • Countries with good performance on the index are the countries that have succeeded in escaping development traps. Abstract This paper explores the relationship between trajectories of structural modernisation and the ability of countries to escape poverty and middle-income traps. The analysis is based on a newly created index of structural modernisation. For each country, the index calculates the productivity gap with respect to the world frontier in activities that typically represent the modern sector of the economy, and weights this relative productivity by the employment share of those activities in the total labour force. The index is calculated for 114 countries from 1960 to 2014. A country is defined as trapped if it takes longer than a benchmark period to move from one income category to another. The analysis shows that expansion of the size of the modern sector without a process of absorption of technology for reducing the technology gap is not enough to ensure steady growth. Inversely, reducing the technology gap in just few sectors will produce an enclave economy that is doomed to stagnate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic liberalization is underway in many countries that had previously been relatively closed to outside commercial relations. This includes former East Bloc nations and LDCs that had long attempted to protect their inefficient industries from foreign competition. Perhaps the most spectacular example of this trend is the former Soviet Union. This article reports a study of the changes that occurred in the former Soviet Union's trade relations with noncommunist countries in the critical period during which trade 'openness' was being established. The results provide insights that may be useful to exporters in their assessment of market opportunities in countries undergoing the difficult transition to a market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should firms treat Europe as a single market with standardized marketing, or should national European markets be treated differently? Which aspects of marketing lend themselves to a more Europe-wide or "Pan-European" approach? What is the relevant definition of Europe? Although currently "Pan-European" marketing is more of a myth than a reality, the trends point toward greater integration, therefore companies need to reassess their European marketing strategies and adapt their marketing operations and programs accordingly, using a coherent framework such as the one proposed in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents two empirical relationships that have emerged as the former communist countries have taken steps to transform their economies. First, data from a sample of twelve transition economies suggest that increased central bank independence of CBI in correlated with lower inflation rates. This CBI inflation correlation is not well explained by initial economics conditions and persists after controlling for fiscal performance and the overall quality of economic reforms. Second, across a larger set of twenty-five transition economies, there is a strong and robust negative relationship between inflation and subsequent real GDP growth. Inflation's adverse effect on investment appears to be one significant channel through which the relationship between inflation and growth arises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the article "Inefficiencies from Financial Liberalization in the Absence of Well-Functioning Equity Markets," by Cho Yoon Je, which appeared in the May 1986 issue. Cho argued that economic development in developing countries was predicated on the development of an efficient financial system which includes equity markets. He argued against the liberalization of private sector banks to avoid adverse selection and incentive effects. The author cites issues with principal-agent relationships, informational imperfections, and legal corporate structures such as limited liability companies.

The article discusses economic changes in the Soviet Union in the 1980's. Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev's government reversed decades of economic isolation in an effort to entice foreign investors. The Soviet government established a 1987 policy which encouraged joint ventures in the Soviet Union. Another important economic reform was the system of collective leasing, whereby the state enters into a medium-term leasing contract. This option allows the personnel of a state-owned and managed factory to lease the plant and the equipment from the state at a fixed annual rate and to conduct business on its own account.

In 1979, China introduced a policy of "economic readjustment." Although China remains a planned economy, the role of marketing in the Chinese economy has changed dramatically. While the structure of the planning process remains quite similar to that in place before 1979, economic readjustment has resulted in freer markets, increased interaction with foreign firms, and a new interest in all aspects of marketing. However, China's efforts to develop modern marketing practices are creating additional problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an examination of Japanese financial markets within the historical context of the 1950s and 1960s. Specifically, the authors wish to explain how particular regulatory forces influenced the development of unique corporate financial structures. They describe how the circumstances of post war reconstruction impacted the economic structure and development. One peculiarity is that Japanese corporations borrow mainly from private banks and insurance companies instead of through bonds.