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Climate Change, Hurricanes, and Sovereign Debt in the Caribbean Basin
Get PDFCaribbean Islands are exposed to hurricanes, the damages of which are projected to intensify due to anthropogenic climate change. The region is also highly indebted. We focus on the interaction between climate change, hurricanes, and public debt. We investigate what the typical impact of Caribbean hurricanes on public debt in the region has been and how anthropogenic climate change has shaped this impact. Our findings show that for the 10 most severe storms, the average increase in debt, measured as the difference between post and pre-storm trends, is about 10 percent. Three years after such a storm, debt levels are 18 percent higher than what would have been expected otherwise. Based on findings from Extreme Weather Event Attribution (EEA) research, we calculate that the impact of a severe hurricane on public debt that is attributable to climate change amounts to an increase of 3.8 percent of the debt stock relative to the level of debt at the time of the event
The State of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean 2023
Get PDFEducation and skill accumulation are fundamental for overcoming structural inequalities, improving social mobility, and boosting productivity. However, educational systems in Latin America and the Caribbean face significant challenges, such as high dropout rates, low completion levels, and deficiencies in the quality of learning. This situation is exacerbated by high inequality in access, quality, and completion, particularly affecting low-income students, rural areas, and racial and ethnic minorities. Having more and better data to help countries visualize problems, identify potential solutions, and decide how to invest resources towards those with the most evidence and potential to make a significant impact on identified educational challenges is key. The State of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean aims to contribute to this goal through a global comparative analysis of the three main dimensions that account for the level of development of educational systems: i) financial resources; ii) coverage and efficiency; and iii) learning outcomes. Additionally, the publication systematizes a selection of indicators from the educational statistics portal CIMA (Information Center for the Improvement of Learning, by its acronym in Spanish), allowing analysis at the national level and with various disaggregations
Programa Maior Cuidado: An Integrated Community-Based Intervention on Care for Older People
Get PDFThis report presents an overview of a novel community-based intervention for older people living in deprived neighbourhoods in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte: Programa Maior Cuidado (PMC). Since 2011 PMC has been jointly run by the municipal Departments of Health and Social Assistance to support dependent older people living in vulnerable families. These families receive up to 20 hours of support a week from professional family care support workers. Health centres and social assistance posts hold joint monthly case reviews and work closely with family care support workers to anticipate and respond to new problems. Between 2011 and December 2022, 3,062 families had received support or were continuing to do so. Drawing on a set of qualitative and quantitative evaluations, we show that PMC operates effectively and appears to generate a range of positive effects. These effects include enhanced health and wellbeing of older people, reducing the stress and burden of family carers and improving the efficiency of outpatient and inpatient health service use. PMC also provides a valuable livelihood opportunity for the caregivers it employs. A cost analysis estimates that the monthly per capita cost of PMC in April 2023 was 916.2 reais (US$173), which is substantially less than alternative interventions. These positive evaluations have led Belo Horizonte municipality to extend the scheme and the Federal Ministry of Health to support similar pilots in new cities. Future evaluations of these pilot schemes will add to the available evidence about PMC and its potential suitability for other parts of Brazil and similar countries
Toward Resilient, Decarbonized Public Investment: Practices for Integrating Climate Action into Public Investment Management
Get PDFPublic investment is a powerful instrument to address climate change mitigation and adaptation challenges, support the transition to low-carbon economies, and help countries meet the goals established in the Paris Agreement. However, for this to occur effectively, public investment management processes must incorporate the climate perspective as part of the planning, resource allocation, and project implementation tools. Two main areas that guide this work are defining the tools and determining what has been learned about their implementation. The chapters herein present a series of management practices and tools that are useful for integrating climate action into investment management, with particular attention to those that support the planning and resource allocation stages. In the planning stage, the work analyzes the following aspects: (i) the use of long-term climate strategies as guiding instruments for public investment; (ii) the design and adoption of national green/climate financing strategies; (iii) the use of investment taxonomies as tools for classifying economic activities and assets according to their contribution to reaching the environmental objectives and adaptation and mitigation; (iv) the application of the social carbon price in the cost-benefit evaluation of projects; and (v) the integration of climate risks in public investment management. In the resource allocation stage, the document analyzes outstanding practices for integrating climate action into public investment prioritization processes
Incorporating Men into Caregiving Tasks: Dismantling Barriers and Reframing Roles in Latin America and the Caribbean
Get PDFDeeply entrenched cultural norms in the LAC society tend to dictate that women should bear the primary responsibility for domestic tasks and caregiving. This social perception results in an unequal distribution of chores, not only within households but also in the broader work environment. This policy brief offers a thorough review of robust academic studies on men\u27s involvement in caregiving and examines specific cases where further research is warranted. It particularly focuses on assessing the effectiveness of various public policies that encourage men\u27s engagement in caregiving at home and in their professional lives, emphasizing the pressing need for a critical approach to this issue through rigorous evaluations and detailed research
Inter-American Development Bank Annual Report 2023: Financial Statements
No full textThis report is the second of two volumes which together constitute the Inter-American Development Bank\u27s 2023 Annual Report. This report contains the management\u27s discussion and analysis of the Bank\u27s ordinary capital and financial statements
Minimum Wage, Business Dynamism, and the Life Cycle of Firms
Get PDFThis paper studies the effects of the minimum wage on the life cycle of firms. We first build a tractable model where heterogeneous firms have labor market power, invest in innovation, and choose formal or informal sectors. The model predicts that a minimum wage hike not only shrinks young and low-productivity firms but also lowers incentives to innovate, resulting in lower life cycle growth. We then test the predictions of the model using Brazilian administrative and census data leveraging the variation in exposure across establishments and municipalities to the large increase in the minimum wage between 1999 and 2010. At the establishment level, an increase in the minimum wage: i) decreases the growth rates of small and young establishments and ii) increases the growth rates of old and large establishments. When analyzing exposed municipalities, we observe an increase in the earnings of workers in both the formal and informal sectors, as well as informal employment. Our findings suggest that the minimum wage is a possible explanation for the decline in the importance of young establishments and business dynamism in Brazil
Interplay Between Innovation Barriers and Cooperation in Latin America: Lessons for Public Policy
Get PDFThis paper investigates whether firms in Latin America that confront more barriers to innovation are more likely to engage in cooperative innovative efforts with other economic actors. Data from the Harmonized Latin American Innovation Surveys Database (LAIS) allows us to explore the relationship between these obstacles and the cooperation of innovation-active manufacturing firms with other economic agents in innovative activities. Our findings robustly suggest that cooperation is a coping strategy for innovation obstacles: firms perceiving obstacles tend to cooperate more, especially with research institutions. For small and (some) medium-sized companies, we also find a positive relationship between financial barriers and cooperation with other firms, and between market obstacles and cooperation with research institutions. These results suggest that, from a public policy perspective, efforts to increase innovation should go beyond a financial market failure approach and embrace a more comprehensive systemic failure approach
Inter-American Development Bank Annual Business Review 2023
No full textThe 2023 Annual Business Review (ABR) provides an overview of the IDB\u27s performance on sovereign-guaranteed outputs and lending program priorities. The ABR identifies trend deviations from IDB portfolio targets to support Bank managements efforts to identify and implement corrective measures. This edition compiles data for all quarters in 2023
Voter Responses to Fiscal Crisis: New Evidence on Preferences for Fiscal Adjustment in Emerging Markets
Get PDFThough governments regularly implement fiscal adjustments to avert crisis, voter attitudes toward competing adjustment strategies are still poorly understood. A conjoint experiment with 8,000 survey respondents in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Peru confirms that individuals prefer spending- to tax-based adjustments in general. However, preferences change dramatically depending on which specific tax and spending adjustments are included and on individuals\u27 personal characteristics. Consistent with their broad preferences for spending- over tax-based adjustments, respondents oppose increases in the personal income tax and support public employment cuts. However, they support or are indifferent towards higher corporate income or value-added taxes and they oppose cuts in social assistance. Preferences for fiscal adjustment also depend on voter characteristics that are unrelated to their pecuniary interests. Ideology, social beliefs, and trust in government significantly influence their preferences for tax- or spending-based adjustments in general and for the specific composition of those adjustments