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Guyana and the IDB Group: Partnering for Resilience
No full textThe IDB Group has been collaborating with Guyana for 48 years and has been a key partner supporting the transformation of the country\u27s economy and improving the lives of the Guyanese population. This publication showcases projects, main milestones, and highlights of these efforts
The Potential for Ride-hailing Integration with Mass Transit Systems: A choice Experiment in Latin America
No full textAs transportation alternatives facilitated by TNCs (Transportation Network Companies) have gained popularity around the world, research has increasingly focused on understanding their impacts on urban mobility, with several studies examining whether they are competing with public transit trips, increasing vehicle kilometers, or contributing to congestion. Recent policy discussions have turned to whether these services could also have positive benefits, such as complementing mass transit services as a first- and last-mile solution. Most research to date has focused on industrialized countries, with little work focusing on Global South cities. Seeking to fill significant evidence gaps on the impacts of ride-hailing on travel behavior, this paper builds on a stated preference survey in three large metropolitan areas in Latin America (Bogota, Medellin, and Mexico City) to evaluate the potential of introducing an integrated scheme of ride-hailing and mass transit. The scenario of the integrated scheme places ride-hailing as a filler of the first- and last-mile gap left by mass transit. We use discrete choice models and simulations to assess the potential for modal shifts under different pricing scenarios. Results suggest limited feasibility (or modal shifts) of an integrated system of ride-hailing with mass transit under the scenarios considered. Even with significant discounts on the integrated fare, for two of the three cases, the additional ridership would remain comparatively low. Nevertheless, this opens the door for considering other app-based mobility options operating under a sharing perspective and that can reduce operative costs in an integrated scheme
Learning can\u27t Wait: Lessons for Latin America and the Caribbean from PISA 2022
No full textThis report explores the results of the latest round of PISA for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), showcasing the results for the region, the differences within the region and between the region and the rest of the world. For this round of PISA, 14 countries of LAC participated in the assessment, representing the largest number of LAC countries in the assessment since its inception. The report covers three key insights: (1) learning is low and highly unequal in LAC, (2) for most countries trends in learning are not moving in the right direction; and (3) countries in LAC should ensure that all students acquire at least basic proficiency in foundational skills, by addressing disparities and focusing on the effective use of technology
Assessing the Regional Economic Benefits of Public Investments: A Replicable Methodology and Case Study Application to the Dominican Republic
Get PDFThis paper presents a comprehensive methodological framework designed to assess the regional economic benefits of public investments. Recognizing the challenges of limited resources and data, especially at the regional level, the study aims to enhance operational efficiency in the early phases of investment projects. The framework supports more informed decision-making by facilitating a rapid assessment of potential benefits, using a data-driven approach that leverages input-output analysis to refine understanding of local economic linkages. Adaptable to various regions with readily available economic statistics, the tool requires minimal input. In collaboration with the Ministry of Economics, Planning, and Development and the Ministry of Tourism the framework was applied to the Ozama region in the Dominican Republic, yielding a pilot assessment tool. The model elucidates supply chain connections across fifteen economic sectors. A case study of the IDB\u27s investment in Santo Domingo\u27s Colonial City demonstrates the tool\u27s utility, revealing significant localized GVA and employment impacts. This study highlights the framework\u27s potential to aid early-stage decision-making and cost-benefit analyses. While the current version focuses on short-term impacts, future enhancements aim to address long-term effects and additionality, further broadening the tool\u27s applicability
Asymmetric Sovereign Risk: Implications for Climate Change Preparation
Get PDFClimate change adaptation efforts are heavily dependent on a countrys fiscal capacity and the associated costs of undertaking adaptation policies. The current accumulation of high debt levels in emerging and low-income developing countries, which are disproportionately affected by climate change, raises significant concerns. This study shows that sovereign risk, and hence funding costs for governments, exhibits significantly asymmetric reactions to its determinants across the conditional distribution of credit spreads. This aspect, previously overlooked in the literature, has relevant policy implications. Countries with elevated risk levels are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change compared to their lower-risk counterparts, especially in the short term. Notably, investing in climate change preparedness proves effective in mitigating vulnerability to climate change, in terms of sovereign risk, particularly for countries with low spreads and long-term debt (advanced economies), where readiness and vulnerability tend to counterbalance each other. However, for countries with high spreads and short-term debt, additional measures are essential as climate change readiness alone is insufficient to offset vulnerability effects in this case. Results also demonstrate that the actual occurrence of natural disasters is less influential than vulnerability to climate change in determining spreads
The Central Role of Social Dynamics in Nudging Social Norms for Collective Health
Get PDFCan societies be nudged to adopt beneficial behaviors? Publicizing how people behave on average descriptive-norms nudging has emerged as a key tool for increasing the adoption of desirable behaviors. While nudging, by describing social norms, has proven effective in one-shot interventions in small samples (marginal-effect designs), nudging on an ongoing basis at the population level may not necessarily lead to higher compliance and can give rise to major challenges. We use a simple model to show that social adjustment dynamics can drive a populations behavior in unanticipated directions. We propose a general approach to estimating equilibrium behavior and apply it to a study of mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our empirical findings align with the analytical approach and indicate that publicizing mask-wearing rates on an ongoing basis could have backfired, as initially high rates would have settled into substantially lower equilibrium rates of the behavior. In other words, if scaled up, positive marginal-effect designs do not necessarily translate into full compliance with the intervention
Inter-American Development Bank Quarterly Business Review: Third Quarter 2023
No full textThe 2023 third quarter edition of the Quarterly Business Review (QBR) provides management with a status of the Bank\u27s performance. The QBR reports on outputs, lending program priorities and organizational indicators on a quarterly basis to allow management to monitor progress in achieving corporate results. This periodic monitoring supports evidence-based decision making and allows for timely identification of deviations from targets and enables effective implementation of measures to address them. Also, the QBR provides an overview of the IDB\u27s performance on sovereign-guaranteed outputs and lending program priorities. It identifies trend deviations from IDB portfolio targets to support Bank management efforts to identify and implement corrective measures. This edition compiles data for the third quarter of 2023
Local Education Spending and Migration: Evidence from a Large Redistribution Program
Get PDFThis paper studies the effects of changes in local public education budgets on individual schooling attainment and migration, as well as on local labor market outcomes. I leverage the introduction of FUNDEF, a large federal program that redistributed public education finance across Brazilian municipalities in the late 1990s, as a source of exogenous variation. Using a cohort-exposure design, I find that, at the individual level, doubling the program-related public education budget led to a 1.4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of completing primary school, and a 0.5 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of staying in the local labor market among exposed cohorts, on average. The mobility effects are concentrated among individuals educated in municipalities that received a positive budget shock as a result of the program, which were also characterized by relatively worse local labor market conditions. At the local labor market level, difference-in-differences estimates suggest that higher public education budgets were associated with lower employment rates and average wages, suggesting that the “brain drain” effect depressed local labor demand in the long run
Health Innovation & Technology in Latin America & the Caribbean
Get PDFThe report offers a comprehensive analysis of health startups in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), delving into the challenges, trends, and investments in the region. It identifies major health challenges faced by LAC populations alongside issues of access, funding, data, workforce, technology, and regulation. Additionally, it outlines 50 health innovation and technology trends shaping the future of healthcare in LAC, with 15 strategic shifts indicating fundamental transformations. The report maps the landscape of health startups, analyzing their distribution by country, sub-sector, and cluster, while also highlighting key venture capital investors and funding activities. Furthermore, it examines IDB Lab\u27s role in the sector and its portfolio of health innovation projects, offering insights into funding types, regions, sub-sectors, and ecosystem players in LAC, both historically and post-pandemic. The report is accompanied by a compendium of health innovation startups in the region, available at: https://publications.iadb.org/en/health-innovation-technology-latin-america-caribbean-market-landscape-and-compendium-companies
Integration & Trade Journal: No. 49: Year 28, May 2024: Going Green: A New Trade Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean
No full textThis 49th edition of this journal address the new challenges and opportunities of the environmental agenda and its implications for international trade in the Latin America and the Caribbean countries. In these six articles, innovative empirical and conceptual evidence is provided on key topics to promote this agenda at the regional level, with the intention of generating policy suggestions and recommendations for the public and private sectors. Five of the articles were prepared by the winners of a call for research in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economy of Buenos Aires (IIEP) of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires ( UBA) carried out in 2023. Meanwhile, a sixth article was produced by the team of the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL) of the Integration and Trade Sector (INT) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). At the IDB INTAL we believe that international trade is an essential channel to move towards green, resilient and inclusive development in the coming years. And it can contribute to reducing the effects of climate change and accompany adaptation and mitigation efforts