International studies department

Page 1. Combining service delivery and advocacy within humanitarian agencies: experiences from the conflict in Sri Lanka Marit Haug International Working Paper 10 Summary This paper analyses the strategies of four humanitarian agencies which have been ...

Page 1. Disponible en: http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/src/inicio/ArtPdfRed.jsp?iCve=21817697005 Redalyc Sistema de Información Científica Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal Vasconcelos Raposo, Eduardo de; Kasahara, Yuri ...

The article discusses the autonomy of Brazil's Central Bank and its potential relationship to the national currency's stability. Beyond the government budget balance and the Central Bank's autonomy, we seek to demonstrate that the currency's stability also depends on the Bank's own political and institutional stability. Due to a gap in the literature, which has focused little attention on the political conditions and economic motivation by which important steps were taken towards achieving autonomy, we analyze the relations between autonomy and stability from a historical-institutional perspective. We call attention to the cyclical nature of the Brazilian economy, which alternates developmentalist policies and stabilization policies and thereby alters the Central Bank's role and degree of autonomy.

The article seeks to explain how policies affect business groups’ decisions to stay or leave a sector of activity in a liberalized economy. The article utilizes a comparative historical approach to explain how business groups in six Central American countries decided to enter, remain in or leave the banking sector. Using case studies of the main banks belonging to business groups in the region, the article seeks to identify the impact of three policies: nationalization, privatization and liberalization. It argues that the sequence and idiosyncrasies of the policies each country adopted created divergent, path-dependent trajectories and different sets of incentives for business groups. As the analysis shows, government policies are not exclusive determinants of business strategies. However, they shape the environment in which business decisions are made. Therefore, understanding the divergent paths of different business groups in the region calls for studies that combine structural and micro-level analysis.

The debate about industrial policy in Latin America has converged to a consensus about the prevalence of open-economy modalities in the region. After the liberalizing reforms of the 1990s, governments across the region would have replaced protectionist measures typical of the previous ISI model by measures that could improve the
competitiveness of existing companies. Consequently, credit and fiscal incentives for exports and technological upgrading of domestic firms had abounded as mechanisms to smooth the integration in the global economy. Despite the correctness of these stylized facts, they ignore the emergence of new modes of protectionism and industrial policies inspired on traditional import-substitution templates. Particularly in Brazil, local content requirements have been increasingly used as a policy to protect the national industry from foreign competition and, simultaneously, attract foreign investment. Through the analysis of the evolution of local content requirement in the Brazilian oil and gas industry, this article discusses how previous paradigms of development (and industrial policy) still subsist in Latin American countries, relativizing the conversion of the region to neo-liberalism. More specifically, we argue that a coalition of interests favorable to LCR was made possible because of particularities of the oil and gas industry in Brazil: such as the existence of a state-owned oil company (Petrobrás) as the dominant market player, and a regulatory framework that shielded it from the rules of international trade. Methodologically, the article adopts a process-tracing of the trajectory of LCR since its inception in the midst of the neoliberal government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso until the recent surge promoted by current president Dilma Rousseff, exploring how policy-makers, business sectors, and academics have adapted previous ISI policies to the context of a more liberalized economy.

ABSTRACT Business Groups and Transnational Capitalism in Central America investigates Central America's political economy through the lens of its powerful diversified business groups. It provides unique insight into their strategies when confronted with a globalized economy, their impact on development, and how they shape the political and economic institutions governing local varieties of capitalism. This study is based on the collection of data on sixty-nine of the largest groups from the six countries of the isthmus – Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama – and combines qualitative and quantitative methods. It seeks to analyze historical trajectories of individual groups and their evolution in distinct national contexts as well as their contributions to innovation and exports. The analysis shows that the business groups have formed alliances with multinational companies (MNCs), but are not in the process of being absorbed by them. Rather they shift sector focus and exploit their networks in order to face competition from MNCs.