Search

The year 2006 marked a milestone in the history of the regional integration of Venezuela. After 33 years as a member of CAN, the country withdrew from the integration agreement and joined Mercosur, marking a significant change in regional integration strategy. In this paper, the causes of this change, as well as its economic and political effects, have been analyzed through desk research. One of the main conclusions is that Chavez decided to use regional integration as a tool to address the liberal policies of the United States, regardless of the economic consequences. Another is that, due to the economic and institutional deterioration of Venezuela, the non-oil productive sector is not ready to compete with other members of Mercosur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the (3DP gap in Venezuela by means of the structural VAR methodology and the Blanchard and Ouah decomposition for the period 1999:1-2010:4. We use quarterly data for the inflation rate, real GDP, unemployment rate, and oil prices. We identify fiscal and monetary innovations on the demand side and technological and labor market disturbances on the supply side. Empirical results reveal that even though there is a wide gap between real and potential (3DP at the beginning of the period, it tends to narrow towards the end of the period as a result of the rise in oil prices. The GDP sample forecast shows that this gap, eventually, could fall as a result of the contraction in economic activity during 2009 and 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of an "archipelago" was initiated in Maracaibo in 1995 with the division of the city into two municipalities, and strengthened with the proposal of the Legislative Counsel of the State of Zulia (CLEZ) to create a third municipality, Maracaibo West. The first fragmentation, that created the Municipalities of Maracaibo and San Francisco, has generated two new disarticulated urban realities that have tried to reconstruct-separately-their own identifies. Based on this reality, the aim of this document is to present the preliminary results of a research that analyzes the relationship between the process of municipalization-fragmentation, the formulas of municipal territorial fusion, and the coordinated and sustainable management of the territory, relating it to the contemporary. urban development debate that faces two visions: the totalizing, represented by the plan, and the fragmented, represented by the urban project. With this purpose two cases of study they were analyzed -in the framework of the Venezuelan legislation-: the Municipal Association and the Metropolitan District the Metropolitan Area of Caracas and of Barcelona (Spain), the hemerographic information available, and applied questionnaires and interviews. In addition, the study also included information, surveys and interviews. The paper concludes that, in Maracaibo, it is viable and necessary the coexistence of the archipelago, and the implementation of the territorial/municipal fusion, since these allow the coordination among actors, the recovery of the comprehensive vision of the city and, consequently, the improvement of the sustainability of the local management, the execution of the urban policies, and the governability of the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Venezuela is a country with federal roots that launched its decentralization process in 1989 with the election of governors and mayors. Peru has a constitutional basis of unitary design that, after a failed decentralization process at the end of the 80's, returned to this path in November 2002 with the election of regional presidents. There are concurrent elements in both cases with regard to the building of political consensus in order to grant the legitimacy of the process, as well as certain differences in their orientations. This paper will study both realities in a comparative way, in order to draw some lessons about their merits and shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]