Documents/Resources

Central America

·        CEPAL Documents

·         Calidad de la Inserción Internacional de Productos Agropecuarios de Centroamérica. (35 páginas) This document explores the changes in agricultural and agroindustrial exports of Central American in the 1990s and examines their position in the international markets.  Special attention is paid to Central American agricultural exports to the US market.      

·        Centroamérica:  Cambio Institucional y Desarrollo Organizativo de las Pequeñas Unidades de Producción Rural  This report examines the role of peasant economic organizations and their relation to the state, their efforts to adapt to domestic and international competition, and their adaptation to the changing regulatory framework.

·        Gasoducto Regional México-Istmo Centroamericano. Resumen del Estudio de Factibilidad. (48 páginas)  Analysis of the feasibility of a regional gas pipe line between Mexico and the Central American Isthmus.  This study comprises six chapters, discussing the technical, economic, financial, environmental, and institutional aspects of the project.

·        Información Básica del Sector Agropecuario, Subregión Norte de América Latina y el Caribe, 1980-1996.  This document contains basic information about the agricultural sector in Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,  Guatemala, Haiti,  Honduras,  Mexico,  Nicaragua,  and Panama.

·        Información Básica del Sector Agropecuario Subregión Norte de América Latina y el Caribe, 1980-1997  This report examines the performance of the agricultural sector in Mexico, Central America, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Haiti.

·         Informe de la Reunióon de Expertos Sobre el Turismo en el Istmo Centroamericano y la República Dominicana.  Report presented in Mexico DF on February, 25-26, 1999, by a group of experts, about the potential contribution of tourism to economic development in Central America.

·        Istmo Centroamericao: Estadísticas de Hidrocarburos, 1998  Report on an energy project in Central America, funded by the government of Germany.  CEPAL provides technical assistance. 

·        Istmo Centroamericano: Las políticas Comerciales 1997-1998  This document describes and analyzes the process of intraregional and extraregional trade liberalization in the period 1997-98 in Central America.  Special attention is paid to the harmonization of trade policies by Central American governments.

·        La Liberalización Comercial y los Acuerdos de Libre Comercio: Perspectivas Ambientales para Centroamérica. Assessment of the environmental impact of trade liberalization and economic integration in Central America.

·       Reunión de Expertos Sobre el Vínculo entre la PYME en Centroamérica y el Sector Exportador.  Meeting of experts in CEPAL’s Mexico Sub-Regional Office to discuss the contribution of the small- and medium-size enterprises to the export sector, on 16-17 November, 1998.

·        Reunión de Expertos sobre Globalización y Productividad en las Economías
Campesinas de Centroamérica: Implicaciones Sociales y Tecnológicas
Reunión de Expertos Sobre Globalización y Productividad en las Economías
Campesinas de Centroamérica: Implicaciones Institucionales y Organizativas
México, D. F., 8 y 9 de Abril de 1999.   Final report presented by a group of experts in Mexico DC on 8-9 April 1999 on the social, technological, institutional, and organizational impact of globalization on the agricultural economies of Central America.

·        IMF Documents

·        Belize - Recent Economic Developments  IMF Staff Country Reports No. 98/109, 1998.

·        Costa Rica - Recent Economic Developments  IMF Staff Country Reports No. 98/45, 1998

·        El Salvador Recent Economic Developments  IMF Staff Country Reports No. 98/32, 1998

·        Guatemala - Recent Economic Developments  IMF Staff Country Reports No. 98/71, 1998

·        Guatemala - Recent Economic Developments - Supplementary Information  IMF Staff Country Reports No. 98/72, 1998

·        Honduras's Growth Performance During 1970-97   By Juan-Ramon, V Hugo (IMF Institute ) Policy Discussion Paper PDP/99/1 assessing the growth performance and economic development of Honduras in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

·        Honduras - Selected Issues  IMF Staff Country Reports No. 98/122, 1998

·        How Extensive Is the Brain Drain?  By William J. Carrington and Enrica Detragiache.  How extensive is the "brain drain," and which countries and regions are most strongly affected by it? This article estimates the extent of migration, by level of education, from developing countries to the United States and other OECD countries.

·       Nicaragua - Statistical Annex  IMF Staff Country Reports No. 98/48, 1998

·        Panama - Statistical Annex  IMF Staff Country Reports No. 98/10, 1998

General

World Bank Documents

·        Institutional Obstacles to Doing Business: Region-by-Region Results from a Worldwide Survey of the Private Sector   By Aymo Brunetti, Gregory Kisunko, and Beatrice Weder. April 1997. This paper - a product of the Office of the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, Development Economics- was produced as a background paper for World Development Report 1997 on the role of the state in a changing world.  Case studies and anecdotal evidence have suggested that uncertainty about policies, laws, and regulations has hampered development of the private sector in many developing countries. Brunetti, Kisunko, and Weder present results from a new cross-country survey that provides comparable data on local investors' problem in dealing with the state. The survey was conducted in 69 countries and covers more than 3,600 entrepreneurs.  Unreliable judiciaries are perceived as major problems in many developing countries. This applies in particular to the Commonwealth of Independent States and to Latin American countries.

·        Leasing to Support Small Businesses and Microenterprises  By Joselito Gallardo.  December 1997. Gallardo explores the potential of leasing as an option to expand small businesses' access to medium-term financing for capital equipment and new technology. In a lease-financing contract, the lessor-financier retains ownership of the asset, lease payments can be tailored to fit the cash-flow generation patterns of the lessee-borrower's business, and the security deposit is smaller than the equity stake required in conventional bank financing.

• Manufacturing Firms in Developing Countries: How Well Do They Do, and Why?  By James Tybout.  August 1998. Manufacturing firms in developing countries have traditionally been relatively protected. They have also been subject to heavy regulation, much of it biased in favor of large enterprises. Accordingly, it is often argued that manufacturers in these countries perform poorly in several respects:

·         Markets tolerate inefficient firms, so cross-firm productivity dispersion is high.

·         Small groups of entrenched oligopolists exploit monopoly power in product markets.

·         Many small firms are unable or unwilling to grow, so important economies of scale go unexploited.

·        Tybout assesses each of these conjectures, drawing on plant- and firm-level studies of manufacturers in developing countries. He finds systematic support for none of them. Turnover is substantial, exploited scale economies are modest, and convincing demonstrations of monopoly rents are generally lacking.

·       Small and Medium-Size Enterprises in Economic Development: Possibilities for Research and Policy.  By Sidney G. Winter. September 1995. The World Bank's most important long-term advantage in promoting development, says Winter, may lie in opportunities to address related obstacles simultaneously. It could mount concurrent efforts to address the problems of small and medium-size enterprises in a particular sector, region, or economy, for example. It could address the conditions of founding new firms, providing finance or technical assistance, developing mutual support institutions, resolving disputes, and perhaps reducing counterproductive government interventions.

·       The Economics of the Informal Sector: A Simple Model and Some Empirical Evidence from Latin America.  By Norman V. Loayza. February 1997. Loayza presents the view that informal economies arise when governments impose excessive taxes and regulations that they are unable to enforce. Loayza studies the determinants and effects of the informal sector using an endogenous growth model whose production technology depends essentially on congestable public services. In this model, changes (in both policy parameters and the quality of government institutions) that promote an increase in the relative size of the informal economy will also generate a reduction in the rate of economic growth.