This paper examines the determinants of social spending in Latin America during the period 1990-2012 and how they differed between the years of the Washington Consensus (1990Consensus ( -2000 and the period that followed (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012). Special attention is also paid to the evaluation of convergence towards a common upper-bounded steady state (absolute beta convergence) or to specific steady states conditioned by their country's specific determinants (conditional beta convergence). We estimate a panel error-correction version of an autoregressive distributed lag model to identify the long-term relationships between social expenditure and its determinants. Generalised methods of moments estimators are used to control the endogeneity of the regressors. Results indicate that Latin American social spending follows a conditional beta convergence process over the Washington consensus period that was mainly driven by structural differences in fiscal burdens and external debt, while during the second period it was explained by conjunctural differences in the fiscal burden, GDP per capita and the growth of trade and capital openness.
This paper evaluates the impact of Ecuadorian innovation support programs, which are intended to enhance firms' technological and managerial capabilities, on firms' innovative behavior and performance. In order to estimate the causal effects, we employ different Propensity Score Matching procedures. Results indicate that participating in a program increases firms' internal R&D and innovation effort, the qualification of the workforce, the likelihood of introducing product, process and organizational innovations and the probability of establishing linkages with research partners. However, participants do not show greater external R&D intensity or a higher propensity to patent, nor are they more likely to cooperate with suppliers, customer or competitors.
Las administraciones tributarias de los países de América Latina han mostrado un desigual desempeño en la efectividad de sus políticas tributarias. Estas diferencias han sido atribuidas a factores macroeconómicos como el tamaño económico del país, su nivel de ingreso per cápita, su especialización productiva o la política comercial adoptada; a factores institucionales como la calidad de la administración, el cuestionamiento de la legitimidad de las instituciones públicas o la percepción sobre el nivel de corrupción; a factores sociales como el nivel de educación, el grado de urbanización o la tasa de natalidad; o bien a características particulares de los países como la existencia de ingresos públicos procedentes de recursos naturales, el grado de desarrollo del sistema financiero o la política de tipo de cambio adoptada.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.