Eduardo Lora - Böcker

Geographic interpretations of development recently have become the subject of much renewed interest and debate within scholarly and public policy circles. Focusing on Latin America, this book examines how physical and human geography has influenced the region's potential for economic and social development. The book assesses how geography affects differences in development between countries and more specifically between Latin America and other regions of the world. The effects of geography on regional development are examined through four channels: the productivity of land, health conditions, frequency and intensity of natural disasters, and access to markets. The book then explores how geography has influenced development within countries through case studies of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru-countries significant for their geographical diversity as well as their wide socioeconomic disparities. These case studies illustrate numerous exceptions to international patterns and prove that while geography matters, it need not determine a country's destiny.Using the knowledge gained from these two perspectives, the book concludes with recommendations for policies that can help countries overcome the limitations imposed by geography and thereby enhance their potential for economic and social development.

Latin America suffered a profound state crisis in the 1980s, which prompted not only the wave of macroeconomic and deregulation reforms known as the Washington Consensus, but also a wide variety of institutional or 'second generation' reforms. The State of State Reform in Latin America reviews and assesses the outcomes of these less studied institutional reforms. This book examines four major areas of institutional reform: a) political institutions and the state organization; b) fiscal institutions, such as budget, tax and decentralization institutions; c) public institutions in charge of sectoral economic policies (financial, industrial, and infrastructure); and d) social sector institutions (pensions, social protection, and education). In each of these areas, the authors summarize the reform objectives, describe and measure their scope, assess the main outcomes, and identify the obstacles for implementation, especially those of an institutional nature.

The ""quality of life"" concept of quality of life is a broad one. It incorporates basic needs but also extends beyond them to include capabilities, the ""livability"" of the environment, and life appreciation and happiness. Latin America's diversity in culture and levels of development provide a laboratory for studying how quality of life varies with a number of objective and subjective measures. These measures range from income levels to job insecurity and satisfaction, to schooling attainment and satisfaction, to measured and self-assessed health, among others.Paradox and Perception greatly improves our understanding of the determinants of well-being in Latin America based on a broad ""quality of life"" concept that challenges some standard assumptions in economics, including those about the relationship between happiness and income.The authors' analysis builds upon a number of new approaches in economics, particularly those related to the study of happiness and finds a number of paradoxes as the region's respondents evaluate their well-being. These include the paradox of unhappy growth at the macroeconomic level, happy peasants and frustrated achievers at the microlevel, and surprisingly high levels of satisfaction with public services among the region's poorest. They also have important substantive links with several of the region's realities, such as high levels of income inequality, volatile macroeconomic performance, and low expectations of public institutions and faith in the capacity of the state to deliver. Identifying these perceptions, paradoxes, and their causes will contribute to the crafting of better public policies, as well as to our understanding of why ""populist"" politics still pervade in much of the region.

In Latin America, a region with a majority population in urban areas, criteria to prioritize policy actions for improving the quality of life in the region's rapidly growing cities is greatly needed. Although housing infrastructure has improved, a variety of problems affect many cities including insecurity, severe socio-economic segregation, a lack of public spaces and poor transport infrastructure. Looking at eight cities in six Latin American countries, the authors use a methodology that combines the hedonic pricing method and the life-satisfaction approach to identify and value housing characteristics and neighborhood amenities and services. The valuations, in turn, are used to produce quality of life indices to compare neighborhoods and assess the potential impact of improved public amenities and services on housing prices and quality of life for different socioeconomic groups.

This exciting new volume provides an up-to-date overview of the current state of taxation in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, its main reform needs, and possible reform strategies that take into account the likely economic, institutional, and political constraints on the reform process.

This exciting new volume provides an up-to-date overview of the current state of taxation in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, its main reform needs, and possible reform strategies that take into account the likely economic, institutional, and political constraints on the reform process.