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2. Quantifying Investment Facilitation at Country Level: Introducing a New Index
- Author:
- Axel Berger, Ali Dadkhah, and Zoryana Olekseyuk
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
- Abstract:
- This article introduces a new and unique dataset for measuring the adoption of investment facilitation measures at country level. The Investment Facilitation Index (IFI) covers 117 individual investment facilitation measures, clustered in six policy areas, and maps their adoption for 86 countries. This article presents the conceptual and methodological background of the IFI and provides a first analysis of the level of adoption of investment facilitation measures across countries participating in the investment facilitation for development negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Our dataset reveals novel insights. Countries which have lower levels of adoption belong to the low-income and lower-middle-income country group and are often located in Africa, the Middle East and to some extent Latin America and the Caribbean. The strong correlation between FDI and the IFI score shows that countries with the lowest levels of FDI, and thus in need of policy tools to attract FDI, have the lowest levels of adoption when it comes to investment facilitation measures. Our dataset has direct relevance for current policy discussions on investment facilitation for development in the WTO but also for domestic-level policy-making. Furthermore, the IFI provides the basis for a future research agenda to assess the design and impact of a future WTO agreement.
- Topic:
- Development, Investment, and WTO
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Middle East, Latin America, and Caribbean
3. Toxic Conflict: Understanding Venezuela's Economic Collapse
- Author:
- Juan Carlos Fernández-Rodríguez
- Publication Date:
- 11-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper discusses the causes of Venezuela’s recent economic collapse, the largest in modern Latin American economic history and one of the largest in modern world history outside of wartime. I argue that Venezuela’s economic implosion is a combination of two crises. The first one reflects the standard unraveling of a populist macroeconomic cycle fed by overspending during a resource boom, while the second one reflects the severing of the country’s trade and financial links with the global economy. This severing is the consequence of the decision by political actors to adopt “scorched earth” strategies with large negative aggregate economic spillovers in their fight for power. I argue that the inability of Venezuela’s high-stakes, winner-take-all political system to deal with the large negative 2014–16 trade shock precipitated the change in political strategies and the descent into economically destructive political conflict.
- Topic:
- Development, Political Economy, Democracy, Economic Growth, Conflict, Institutions, and Peacebuilding
- Political Geography:
- South America and Latin America
4. Social Mobility and Economic Development: Evidence from a Panel of Latin American Regions
- Author:
- Guido Neidhofer, Matias Ciaschi, Leonardo Gasparini, and Joaquín Serrano
- Publication Date:
- 09-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
- Abstract:
- We explore the role of social mobility as a driver of economic development by constructing a panel data set that includes measures of intergenerational mobility of education at the sub-national level in Latin America. First, we map the geography of educational mobility for 52 Latin American regions, as well as its evolution over time. Then, through a novel weighting procedure that considers the participation of cohorts to the economy in each year, we estimate the effect of changes in mobility on economic indicators, such as income per capita, poverty, child mortality, and luminosity. Hereby, we control for several covariates, including migration, educational expansions, initial conditions, and unobserved cross-regional heterogeneity. Our findings show that increasing social mobility had a significant and robust impact on the development of Latin American regions.
- Topic:
- Development, Economic Growth, Economic Mobility, Equality, and Equality of Opportunity
- Political Geography:
- Latin America