Financial Inclusion and Financialization: Latin American Main Trends after the Great Crisis

In recent decades, the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have promoted policies and programs for financial inclusion (FI). This article studies the meaning of the inclusion proposal as well as the main results. The most important argument of this policy is the increase of local savings as the basis of investment and growth. Although this objective has not been achieved, inclusion remains a current policy. In reality, FI has been driven by an underlying agenda, as has been the case of other policies from the same sphere of interests that the Washington Consensus authored at the beginning of the 1990s. Although this denomination has been abandoned due to the loss of prestige it has achieved in the region, its main objectives continue to be promoted by many governments. Also, FI has been a vehicle for deepening financialization.     

Quantitative analysis of the implementation of educational plans in Latin America

In this paper an index of plan implementation is defined and applied to the 1960–1970 educational plans of Latin American countries. Statistical analysis is used to specify the determinants of the values of the index. It is shown that a lack of statistical data and of qualified personnel are the main reasons for insufficient plan implementation.     

Capital–Skill Complementarity: Does Capital Composition Matter?

We estimate the effect of capital composition on the size of capital–skill complementarity and the skill wage premium. Disaggregating the capital stock into different types according to technological content, we find that: capital is more of a q‐complement to skilled labor than to unskilled labor; the higher the technological component of capital, the larger the size of the relative q‐complementarity between capital and skilled labor; and replacing non‐technological with technological capital might increase the skill wage premium by about 9 percent. Our results highlight that changes in capital composition matter for understanding changes in the skill wage premium.     

Informality,tariffs and wealth

This article analyzes the interaction between changes in tariff protection, informality, inequality and aggregate income. First, we describe some new empirical evidence on informality, the formal/informal wage gap and trade openness in Latin American countries. Then we present a simple model characterized by three (empirically based) assumptions: (1) agents consume both formal and informal goods; (2) the government uses tariff revenues to purchase formal goods; (3) informality is a voluntary phenomenon. The model predicts that tariff reduction increases informality and wage inequality and that the maximization of income requires a positive level of tariff protection. The model's results are shown to be consistent with the empirical evidence concerning Latin American countries.     

The human resources approach to manpower,education and income distribution planning

This paper first presents the hypothesis relating the education of the labor force to production, along with some observations about its statistical verification. The conceptual basis for the manpower approach to educational planning appears next, followed by a discussion of its use with and without the assumption of constant labor productivity. Finally, the human resources approach to manpower and educational planning is extended to include income distribution planning. The method developed is applied to Mexico.     

Decision rules to specify the extent of division of labor

At least since Adam Smith, it has been generally accepted in economics and organization theory that for large volumes of production, division of labor reduces unit costs. Despite this, there does not seem to be any clear statement of why the division of labor produces the results attributed to it. Attempts to explain these results with the gains in productivity due to specialization do not seem to have much analytical proof or empirical verification, in particular because specialization is just a counterpart of division of labor. Operational rules to specify how large the division of labor should be in order to be beneficial do not seem to be available, either. The object of this paper is to analyse these questions in a way that could help in the solution of real problems.     

Multidimensional scaling reliability in similarity judgments about environmental sentences

The aim of this research was to analyze the stability of Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). The investigations on this topic include studies related to the assumptions of linearity and monotonicity and to the validity and reliability of MDS procedures. Centered in this last topic, a test of the reliability of MDS procedure was carried out. We employed a set of complex stimuli: 21 sentences related to environmental field. 40 subjects made similarity judgements about both pairs “sentence A — sentence B” and “sentence B — sentence A”, so obtaining one square matrix per subject. Each of these matrices was broken down into two triangular matrices that were scaled separately by INDSCAL. The coordinates of stimuli in both MDS solutions were correlated. The results show a significant correlation between the two solutions.     

The Influence of Technology Differences on Corporate Environmental Patents: A Resource‐Based Versus an Institutional View of Green Innovations

This paper proposes that both the resource‐based view and institutional theory predict a positive relationship between the number of patented environmental innovations and non‐environmental innovations held by a firm, because they both are subject to the influence of similar factors. However, while the resource‐based view predicts that technological differences between the patented environmental innovations owned by a firm and those in the industry as a whole will positively affect the firm's environmental innovations, the institutional perspective predicts a negative relationship. Our results derive from a sample of 5537 environmental patents from 59 large companies in the electrical components and equipment industry worldwide, and show a positive relationship between patented environmental and non‐environmental innovations in a firm, but a negative influence on the number of the firm's patented environmental innovations resulting from differences between the firm's environmental technologies and those generally prevalent in the industry. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Macroeconomics from a higher standpoint

Dr A Vasudevan and Prof P Ray are scholars and teachers of monetary theory as well as practitioners of the art of monetary policy. The short message of the slim volume under review is that the weights attached to the two domains are variable. Thus, politics matters with the finitude of power in office. In practice, discretion scores over rules. The Phillips curve is askew and the problem of adding financial stability to the tradeoff or tradein might not be an unsolvable problem. The authors make a case for the revival of planning complete with sectoral distinctions and with government choice of green techniques and long-term finance. They ruminate on the unravelling of the “impossible trinity” and resurrect Keynes’ plan for an International Clearing Union. In sum, a “philosophy of development” trumps the Theil-Tinbergen theorem on instruments and targets.