Vulnerable groups in recessionary situations: The case of children and the young in Chile

This study analyses the impact which recessionary conditions have had in Chile on a particularly vulnerable age group: children and the young. In addition to the external crisis, Chile experienced serious imbalances in the form of inflation and balance-of-payments deficits in the early 1970s. Social development experts have long recommended the application of selective policies to ‘target groups’ whose situation is especially vulnerable to economic fluctuations. During the early 1970s, Chile implemented policies specifically designed to improve the situation of children, especially in terms of mother and child care, and programmes were undertaken to combat infant undernutrition. This paper evaluates the success of these programmes in counteracting the negative effects of the recession and the recessionary adjustment policies.     

Foreign Direct Investment in Mexico since the Approval of NAFTA

Cross-country panel data are used to assess the effect of free-tradeagreements on flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Free-tradeagreements are found to have a significant positive effect onFDI flows, and free-trade agreements are found to matter morefor the smaller members of the agreement. For example, the NorthAmerican Free-Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) effect on FDIflows into Mexico is much larger than its effect on flows intothe United States. These cross-country results are used to assessNAFTA’s effect on FDI flows into Mexico. After controllingfor a set of other factors—such as an increase in worldwideFDI flows—the trade agreement is found to generate FDIflows nearly 60 percent higher than they would have been withoutthe agreement.     

Modeling public transport corridors with aggregate and disaggregate demand

Microeconomic public transport models aimed at maximizing social benefits usually consider demand in an aggregate manner. In this paper we examine the effect of this approach on the optimal values of frequency and vehicle size by comparison with models where demand is described in detail as a matrix of flows between every station in a single line service. The theoretical analysis and the numerical examples suggest that the spatially aggregated model underestimates optimal frequency and overestimates vehicle size.     

Antecedents and consequences of external risk perception in franchising: evidence from the hospitality industry

In this article, we contribute to the understanding of the role that external risk perceptions play in decisions regarding the combination of company-owned and franchised units in the hospitality industry, and to knowledge of the impact of specific CEO characteristics on perceptions of environmental uncertainty. We examine the effects of tenure, an entrepreneurial nature and the innovative attitude of the CEO on the perception of external risk, and address the direct and indirect consequences of such perceptions of external risk on the configuration of the network of outlets. Our results show a significant relationship between the characteristics of the CEO and the perception of risk but, contrary to expectations, risk perception is associated with a lower degree of franchised outlets within the ownership mix.     

贸易政策、出口和经济增长——基于拉美国家实证数据的研究

20世纪40年代起,拉美国家采取的是以贸易保护思想为基础的进口替代政策,70年代中期开始,大部分拉美国家开始了以贸易开放、资本开放为核心的“新自由主义改革”。本文首先对拉美对外贸易政策的沿革进行回顾,就拉美的“新自由主义”改革的实效进行了一个基本考察,在此基础上,通过计量模型详细探讨了拉美国家的出口和经济增长的关系。