This paper provides some theoretical scenarios the socioeconomic impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). To do so, after a brief literature review of previous pandemics, we use the macro and microeconomic theory, together with aggregated data, in order to provide expected implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the LAC region. At a macroeconomic level, we explain how the COVID-19 shock is causing both aggregate supply and aggregate demand to reduce so plunging the region into a recession and why such a recession is dangerously harmful for the LAC economies. At a micro level, we describe why some enterprises would adapt to remain in the market or even growth; by contrast, some of them would leave the market in the short term. For the consumers, the impact of this sanitary crisis is related to the change in their preferences and household members’ relations due to extended quarantines.
This article reports an investigation of the drivers of Venezuelan asylum seekers—people who have left this country given the scarcity of food and medicines and the troubled actual socio-economic situation. To do so, we use data about the main countries in which Venezuelans have claimed for asylum during the period 2014–17. Using a panel-regression model, we have found that Venezuelan asylum seekers increase, on average, in countries that (i) are geographically nearby Venezuela, (ii) are less politically stable and (iii) have higher real income per capita, lower inflation rates and higher unemployment rates. Still, such a general profile of countries preferred by Venezuelan asylum seekers is nuanced by the small magnitude of the effects regarding the economic variables: it appears that Venezuelan asylum seekers hardly consider the economic situation of a country for deciding to stay. Furthermore, the empirical evidence provided by our model reflects the deterioration of Venezuela’s socio-economic aspects.
Although literature about regional integration is substantial, its definition remains controversial. Indeed, it is common nowadays for the terms regional integration and regional economic integration to be used interchangeably in spite of the importance accorded by literature to non-economic factors. Inspired on the South American integration strategy-the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), this paper revisits the theory of regional integration and proposes to analyse regional integration projects from three complementary angles: economic integration, political integration and physical integration. Moreover, it asserts that political and physical integration constitute a preliminary, or contemporaneous, step towards economic integration and not a final stage, as the current debate suggests.
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