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A contemporary challenge is inequality. This paper illustrates why ideas matter, and how they can change over time. Inequalities are reinforced when they are taken for granted. But this can be disrupted when marginalised people gain self-esteem; challenge hitherto unquestioned inequalities; and gain confidence in the possibility of social change. Slowly and incrementally, social mobilisation can catalyse greater government commitment to socially inclusive economic growth. This is illustrated with ethnographic research from Latin America, where income inequality has recently declined. Clearly, however, no single paper can provide a comprehensive account of political change in an incredibly diverse region. By highlighting some ways in which ideas matter (and the limitations of alternative hypotheses about increased fiscal space and democratisation), this paper merely seeks to persuade political economists to go beyond ‘incentives’. Future efforts to tackle inequality might harness the power of ideas: tackling ‘norm perceptions’ (beliefs about what others think and do); publicising positive deviance; and strengthening social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Women's land ownership, even without formal title, improves family farmers' welfare. • Women's informal land rights increase household crop diversity and food security. • Women who own land dedicate significantly less time to agricultural work. • We find no effects on women's empowerment in production, credit, or income dimension. This paper examines the effect of women's informal land ownership on women's empowerment and household food security in the context of Peruvian family farming. Using an instrumental variable approach, we explore whether self-declared informal ownership of plots provides women with increased bargaining power, empowering them to participate more actively in productive decision-making as well as endowing them with the necessary resources to improve crop diversity and food security. While our results do not find significant effects of informal land ownership on three dimensions of women's empowerment (production, income, credit), we do find that owning land significantly decreases the daily time dedicated to agricultural work, possibly freeing up time for the woman to engage in other activities. Results also show that women's land ownership significantly increases the level of crop diversity and improves the household's probability of being food secure by 20 percentage points. This suggests that equal access to land, even without formal title, plays an important role in improving household welfare among smallholder family farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of land reforms on household agricultural investments, livelihood strategies, and income levels in Brazil. Given the persistence of rural poverty in Northeast Brazil and the existence of both land and credit market failures, land reforms remain important policy tools for alleviating poverty and increasing growth. This paper evaluates the impact of the recent National Program of Land Credit, a controversial market-assisted land reform program that provides access to land through private land markets. Household-level panel data covering similar beneficiary and control groups allows for identification using both propensity score weighting and difference-in-difference methodologies. The evidence indicates that the Land Credit successfully transitions households into agriculture, with land holdings and investments increasing as a result of the program. As with many earlier land reform programs in Latin America, the new wave of market-assisted land reforms does not increase access to private credit. While land reforms have the potential to drive redistribution, poverty reduction, and growth, these findings suggest that ensuring greater access to credit, irrigation, and higher return economic activities remains important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper investigates whether small-scale water supply systems implemented and operated by water user associations increase access to piped water supply in rural Brazil by more than systems by local governments. Starting from 15% to 16% in the year 2000, access rates in rural areas with water user associations increased to 33.4% in 2010. In areas with local government supply systems, access rates only increased to 24.9%. Based on data from Brazilian census and the national water and sanitation survey, the empirical analysis in this paper shows that the observed difference is effectively due to project-type choice. Additionally it points toward higher accountability as a potential reason for better results of community-based projects. In municipalities where social groups requested a new system before the local government started implementation and therefore public awareness for the project was higher, the increase in access rates is comparable to the increase in municipalities with water user association projects. The same is true if local media is present or political competition in local elections is higher. As the effect of project type on access rates might be confounded by simultaneous drivers of project-type choice and access rates, the quantitative analysis is based on a difference-in-difference estimator in combination with kernel matching to overcome the endogeneity of project type. The treatment effect revealed by this analysis is robust to various specification changes and the robustness checks show no structural differences between treatment and control groups that could bias the results. The calculation of matching weights for the kernel matching is informed by semi-structured interviews with academics and sector experts in Brazil explaining the determinants of project choice. The interviews highlight the political economy behind infrastructure expansion in rural Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines the impact of the program Seguro de Capacitación y Empleo (SCE) implemented to provide support in skills upgrading, job seeking, and job placement to eligible beneficiaries of the Argentinian conditional cash transfer program Plan Jefes . The SCE is an example of a growing trend observed in Latin America, where labor activation components have been increasingly included into cash transfers programs to support beneficiaries in finding more stable income opportunities. Despite this growing trend, not enough is known regarding the effectiveness of these components, especially on job quality. In this context, this paper sheds light on whether the provision of a comprehensive package of active labor market measures contributes to a successful labor market integration of cash transfers beneficiaries. Taking advantage of the panel structure of the Permanent Household Survey and exploiting the time variation in the assignment of the program as identification strategy, we apply difference-in-difference estimators to measure the impact on a number of labor market indicators. We find that the program affects positively the job quality of participants by increasing the probability of having a formal job and raising hourly wages. Moreover, the intervention is associated with a lower probability of having a low-paid job and working an excessive number of hours. These effects are, however, not homogeneous across all groups of participants. While the program is more successful among the younger beneficiaries, it does not contribute to an improvement in the labor market conditions of female beneficiaries, who in fact are the majority of SCE participants. Our results suggest that reducing dependency on monetary transfers through programs, such as the SCE, that are rich in activation components is beneficial for participants’ labor market trajectories and therefore, it constitutes a satisfactory exit strategy to more universal cash transfer programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Gender-based violence movements are "tangential" to drug violence, protesting its root causes without targeting perpetrators. • Feminist movements work to reduce interpersonal violence, protest impunity, strengthen democracy, and resist inequality. • In Juárez, Caracas and Medellín, vibrant feminist anti-violence movements are indirectly mobilizing against drug violence. • Policymakers should support feminist anti-violence activism as a long-term approach for reducing drug violence. • Social movement scholars should consider the impact of tangential movements on high-risk social issues. In the last fifty years, Latin America witnessed both a stark rise in violence between drug trafficking organizations and militarized police forces, as well as a significant expansion of social movements. Few movements, however, have explicitly mobilized against drug violence due to the extreme dangers of speaking out against armed and corrupt actors. In this paper, we extend our understanding of social movements and drug violence by analyzing the relationship between feminist movements against gender-based violence—or feminist anti-violence (FAV)—and drug violence. We conceive FAV as a "tangential movement" to drug-related violence, mobilizing around its root causes and consequences without directly targeting its perpetrators. The paper examines case studies of feminist anti-violence movements in three cities: Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; Caracas, Venezuela; and Medellín, Colombia. We show that as feminist movements mobilize against gender-based violence, they provide an alternative, and safer, avenue for citizens to mobilize against drug-related violence by working to (a) curb intimate forms of abuse and trauma that create intergenerational cycles of violence; (b) decrease impunity by demanding the state hold perpetrators of violence accountable; (c) strengthen government institutions and their relations with civic organizations, thereby helping enforce democracy and human rights; (d) challenge patriarchal notions of violent masculinity; and (e) organize against structural inequality that bolsters participation in the drug trade. By considering how feminist anti-violence movements help address the underlying causes of drug violence, we can identify new pathways for organizing around human security in contexts where direct channels of confrontation are too risky. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper problematizes the use of the “landscape” concept as the perspective in forest governance and REDD+ discourse, especially as it affects ownership claims and management of forest space. This study advocates the contrasting concept of “territory” as essential to spatial justice in community-held forest lands and for effectivity in REDD+ projects. Whereas landscape in REDD+ discourse is a basic unit of resolution for biophysical, especially conservationist, analysis; territory refers to spatial units embedded in tenurial entitlements, and thus in governance and the execution of management. The study critically considers case studies and conceptual approaches in REDD+ and Climate Smart Landscapes projects and their commitment to landscape, or territory, as the spatial governance unit. The review highlights some promising partial steps toward “territorialization” as a good practice, but finds that most do not follow up the implications for governance. The paper asserts that “landscape” as an analytical understanding of forest peoples’ space contains serious defects—it does not set up the essential architecture and mechanisms for social owning and holistic management of designated (forest) space as territory, it does not address the contestations around “whose territory?”, and a “landscape” discourse can obfuscate the actual practice of REDD+ programs. “Territorialization” would involve situating legitimate land users’ rights at the core of REDD+ spatial planning and implementation. “Forest landscapes as territories” would legitimize the entitlements of forest peoples to govern their own lands, with the responsibilities and rewards of their experience of effective management. The community and its social territorial space would become the definitive spatial unit for operationalizing REDD+, rather than the ecological unit or watershed, by prioritizing upwardly institutionalized territory over bio-physical spatializations of landscape. A territorial perspective should shift some power away from global and national policy-setters to local actors (not only registered landowners), as central in REDD+ governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary What accounts for variation in human development levels across similar communities? Why, for example, have some equally poor, indigenous, highland communities in Guatemala made advances in health and education while others have stagnated or regressed? This paper argues that, contrary to an emerging recognition of the role of “ordinary citizens” in peacebuilding or crime reduction, human development requires the complementarity of non-state leaders and government resources. Results are demonstrated through a quantitative analysis of all of Guatemala’s 334 municipalities, combined with a qualitative analysis, including over 250 key informant interviews and focus group participants from four paired communities throughout the Western Highlands, which effectively traces the implementation of a widely acclaimed government anti-hunger program. This paper underscores the variability in local governance present across short distances in Guatemala, with dramatic influence on local development outcomes. In most communities, the role of traditional leaders and other non-state actors is increasingly crowded out by political conflicts exacerbated by growing, and shifting political party and religious affiliations. In these instances, development governance has broken down and development resources are distributed along locally derived lines of patronage versus need. Elsewhere, however, where state actors have identified and incorporated the legitimacy, informal authority, and networks of traditional leaders at the village level, the implementation of the anti-hunger program is visibly more effective. The role of local, informal leaders is pivotal in legitimizing the program, mobilizing citizen participation, and overseeing more equitable distribution of key resources. The paper concludes with an exploration of what explains variation in the quality of local governance across space and its implications for development practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares the innovativeness of group-affiliated firms (GAFs) and standalone firms (SAFs), and it investigates how country-specific institutional factors affect the group–innovation relationship. The paper analyzes the contrasting predictions of two competing views: the institutional voids and the organizational resilience theses. The empirical analysis focuses on a large sample of firms in Latin America. In line with the organizational resilience thesis, the results point out that the superior innovation performance of GAFs is stronger for national economies with more efficient financial, legal, and labor market institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper studies the impact of gender and ethnicity on educational outcomes in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, using the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-International (IPUMS-I) database. Using an estimation method analogous to difference-in-differences, the paper finds that gender-based differences in literacy, primary school completion, and secondary school completion are larger for minority ethnic groups compared to others, or ethnicity-based differences are larger for women compared to men. The findings suggest that the intersection of gender and ethnicity confers cumulative disadvantage for minority groups, especially in Latin American countries, with implications on the design of development programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We provide new evidence on the effectiveness of PAs and the role of institutions. • We use high-resolution satellite imagery and regression discontinuity methods. • PAs significantly reduce deforestation in both national PAs and collective lands. • National PAs are only effective near human settlements, in more developed regions. • In contrast, Collective lands avoid deforestation in remote, less developed regions. Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of conservation policy. While evidence shows that, overall, PAs have contributed to preserving forests, their impact varies greatly depending on the institutional context. This paper provides new evidence on the mechanisms through which local institutions shape the effectiveness of PAs. We use high-resolution satellite imagery of deforestation and illicit activities in Colombia and spatial regression discontinuity methods to estimate the causal effect of PAs in different institutional contexts. Our main results indicate that PAs significantly reduce deforestation, with larger effects for collective lands than national (strict-use) PAs, and no impact for regional (multiple-use) PAs. However, national PAs are only effective near human settlements, in municipalities that provide more public goods and are less violent. In remote areas, national PAs are particularly vulnerable to the expansion of coca crops and gold mining. In contrast, collective lands reduce coca crops and avoid deforestation in remote, less developed regions. These results highlight the extent to which natural PAs rely on the institutional capacity of the national and local governments, while collective lands protect forests even when state presence is weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The local institutionalization of RSPO standards shifts national and sub-national structures of environmental governance, power, and authority. • In Ecuador, palm oil governance is increasingly driven by a transnational regime of private and public institutions of governance. • The state has pursued an alternative model of governance that harmonizes private regulatory instruments with national economic plans. • Standards entrenchment has influenced community-company dynamics, public–private governing coalitions, and scalar approaches to landscape governance. • New arrangements bring about novel governance coalitions and approaches while reinscribing the exclusionary nature of palm oil governance. The expansion of Latin America's palm oil frontier has spurred an explosion of interest in the social and environmental impacts of palm oil production. Researchers have been particularly focused on the effectiveness of global sustainability certification standards in addressing induced vulnerabilities. Only a small fraction of this research, however, analyzes how the local institutionalization of global standards has shaped national and sub-national structures of environmental governance, or regional conceptualizations of authority. It also fails to examine how the entrenchment of global standards has reworked local social relations inhering within formal and informal palm oil governing arrangements. To address these gaps, this paper draws on the case of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Ecuador to answer the following research questions: 1) How does the local introduction and institutionalization of RSPO standards (re)shape national and sub-national environmental governance structures and relations? 2) How do RSPO standards reconfigure long-standing notions of power and authority? Drawing on extended fieldwork, the paper finds that the introduction of RSPO standards has prompted three major shifts in domestic palm oil governance. These shifts are: 1) technicalization of community-company relations, 2) hybridization of governance coalitions 3) regionalization of governance efforts. Taken together, these transformations point to an emerging transnational hybrid governance regime that blends public laws with private guidelines to reach national and international sustainability objectives. The regime has enabled the emergence of new palm governance authorities in the sector yet at the same time, it has reinscribed the uneven power relations of palm oil governance. The study concludes that future research and policy efforts must go beyond simply evaluating RSPO standards in local spaces, and instead aim to improve the social relations that exist within agro-commodity chains in order to make the governance of sustainable palm oil more socially-inclusive and just. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines the effects of tariff removal on consumers’ welfare focusing on the Colombian trade liberalization process and its automobile industry. Using product level data this paper calculates the post-reform gains in consumers’ welfare to be just below three thousand dollars per purchaser. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the gains achieved are due, for the most part, to increased variety rather than to price competition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Gender affects household spending in two areas that have been widely studied in the literature. One strand documents that greater female bargaining power within households results in a variety of shifts in household production and consumption. One important source of bargaining power is ownership of assets, especially land. Another strand examines the gender bias in spending on children. This paper addresses both strands simultaneously. In this paper, differences in spending on education are examined empirically, both at the household and individual levels. Results are mixed, though the balance of evidence weighs toward pro-male bias in spending on education at the household level. Results also indicate that the relationship between asset ownership and female bargaining power within the household are contingent on the type of asset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Coffee price shocks spur public land grants where coffee suitability is greater. • Organized cultivators out-compete squatters in leveraging price shocks to win land grants. • Longstanding political and economic inequality facilitate the power of organized cultivators. • Public land distribution continues to diminish national patrimony and natural spaces in many developing countries. Abstract How do commodity shocks impact the privatization of public lands? This paper examines this question through the lens of the establishment of private property rights over public lands in Colombia, which has had one of the Western Hemisphere's largest public land distribution programs during the last century. Using data on exogenous international coffee price shocks along with data on land suitability for coffee production as determined by agro-climatic conditions and roughly 250,000 public land grants, I find that coffee price increases generate more public land grants in municipalities where land is more suited to coffee production. Additional tests suggest that the findings are driven by the power of organized cultivators to steer the land grant process in their favor. The findings shed light on the role of organized actors in the countryside extending private extension of control over public territory – a phenomenon that has drastically diminished public lands and natural spaces in numerous countries over the last two centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Following the recently-developed bounds testing approach, the paper analyzes the long-run determinants of the Mexican peso’s real exchange rate from 1988Q1 to 2008Q2. Controlling for the standard determinants, the paper shows that all types of capital inflows tended to appreciate the peso. In contrast to recent multi-country studies, it finds no evidence of a less harmful effect from foreign direct investment (FDI)—on the contrary, the FDI’s appreciation effect can be particularly strong—and interprets this finding. The paper also shows that monetary policy, through changes in the short-term interest differential, can have persistent, level effects on the real exchange rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper contributes to existing discussions of global value chains (GVC) and industrial upgrading by examining observations from eight months of field research in Guatemala and Colombia, where upgrading firms have their own nationally distinct form of labor relations, despite producing the same products for the same overseas buyers. Analysis of these observations leads to the conclusion that labor relations show significant leeway in relation to upgrading outcomes, and that local history merits more attention as a driver of management strategy. The paper concludes with a discussion of relevant theory and implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Buffer stock savings theories predict that more vulnerable households build up liquid savings in order to cope with income variability. Using data from 1801 marginalized Mexican households, this paper examines how household liquidity levels vary by income level and use of banking. The paper finds strong evidence of buffer stock savings in poor and vulnerable households. It also shows that membership in a financial cooperative is a determinant of higher household liquidity levels. Financial instruments are used more to confront idiosyncratic shocks than systemic shocks. Idiosyncratic shocks and remittances are important determinants of liquidity levels in unbanked households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper is an introduction to nine papers on the impact of globalization on inequality and poverty in Latin America, arising out of a conference organized in Rio under the auspices of a large-scale UNU-WIDER research project. Focusing on different manifestations of globalization and channels through which globalization affects poverty and inequality, the case studies in the present volume cover the spectrum from broad macroeconomic regional and country analyses to more micro-oriented studies in different settings in Central and South America. The case studies illustrate that the impact of globalization on poverty and inequality is extremely context specific. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The present paper considers a sometimes contentious process of land reform presently occurring in Brazil. This process, referred to in the paper as Direct Action Land Reform (DALR), involves organizations such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) and more spontaneous actions of individuals desiring a piece of land for their own. Results of a survey covering 751 households engaged in such land reform actions in the Brazilian Amazon are presented, in order to describe participants and land reform processes. Evidently, social movement organizations provide for a modest degree of wealth accumulation, a welfare improvement that must be set against potential environmental costs. The paper concludes by calling attention to the challenge DALR may ultimately pose to the Brazilian state. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Credit rationing studies carried out at the household level and based on responses from male heads of households present an incomplete and biased assessment of who is likely to be constrained, why they are constrained, and what is the extent of the constraints. They ignore possibly conflictive intrahousehold dynamics and assume that imperfections in rural financial markets are gender-neutral. This paper addresses both issues theoretically and empirically. The Semi-Cooperative Household model developed for this analysis formalizes the conditions under which spouses’, and particularly women’s, individual access to credit can be affected by their own position in the financial market as well as by intrahousehold dynamics. These notions are then explored empirically using husbands’ and wives’ individual perceptions of their access to credit in rural Paraguay. The most significant empirical findings of the paper are that (i) compared to men, women are more likely to be credit constrained; (ii) women’s rationing status responds to a different set of factors than men’s; and (iii) husbands may choose not to intermediate capital to their wives even when they are able to do so. Results from this exercise provide empirically sound support for the assumptions underlying women-targeted credit programs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This special section brings together 4 of the 12 studies conducted within a research program analyzing the relationships among social mobilization, governance, and rural development in contemporary Latin America. The introduction gives an overview of the contemporary significance of social movements for rural development dynamics in the region, and of the principal insights of the section papers and the broader research program of which they were a part. This significance varies as an effect of two distinct and uneven geographies: the geography of social movements themselves and the geography of the rural political economy. The effects that movements have on the political economy of rural development also depend significantly on internal characteristics of these movements. The paper identifies several such characteristics. The general pattern is that movements have had far more effect on widening the political inclusiveness of rural development than they have on improving its economic inclusiveness and dynamism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper draws on survey data and qualitative evidence from Brazilian manufacturing firms to examine the scale and consequences of tax evasion at the enterprise level. It discusses the costs and benefits of under-reporting from the entrepreneur’s perspective and provides evidence that evasion of sales tax is only weakly correlated with firm size. The paper then shows that medium-sized and large manufacturing firms that evade taxes are less likely to undergo an external audit and more likely to be asked for informal payments by tax officials. It also argues that they may be less likely to participate in markets for equity finance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper analyzes institutional design, organizational capacity, and interplay in markets for ecosystem services. It examines the development of a market-based mechanism to commercialize forest carbon in Mexico through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This is compared with a State-run carbon forestry program aiming to provide emission rights to voluntary, retail-based, carbon markets. Marketing forest carbon is hampered by lack of organizational capacity in government and civil society, uncertainties in the international policy process, and the interplay with existing common property institutions in rural Mexico. The paper identifies theoretical and practical barriers to implementing institutional arrangements for forest carbon trading. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Does democracy suffer when corruption is high? Unfortunately, most studies of corruption have been descriptive, making it difficult to develop a well-supported answer to this question. There are, of course, quantitative corruption measures, but the most popularly used of them are measures of corruption perception aggregated at the national level, rather than corruption experience at the individual level. It is difficult to draw firm conclusions about the impact of corruption from such data. This paper proposes a corruption–victimization measure based on a survey research approach to the measurement problem, and discusses (in a non-technical fashion) its strengths and limitations. The paper then presents data from studies conducted by the Vanderbilt University Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), and demonstrates the impact of corruption victimization on belief in the legitimacy of the political system, a critical element in democratic political stability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper combines quantitative and qualitative data to estimate empirically the impact of social capital on household welfare in Bolivia. Social capital measured by memberships in agrarian syndicates and other associations is found to increase household welfare and reduce poverty. As an asset, social capital matters more for the poor than the nonpoor and has greater effect on household welfare than investment in primary education. The paper elaborates on the relation of complementarity and substitution between informal and formal institutions. The relationship between social capital and welfare is modified by the nature and presence of regional organizations that have federated upward from communities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

During the past decade, diverse developing countries have introduced radical reforms in their collection of taxes. In more than 15 countries traditional tax departments have been granted the status of semi-autonomous revenue authorities (ARAs). This paper investigates the design and impact of ARAs in Latin America, arguing that politicians create ARAs in order to signal a credible commitment to taxpayers that tax administration will be more effective, fair, and competent. Using survey data from corporate taxpayers and tax professionals in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela, the paper presents econometric analyses and performance indicators that support the hypothesis that there is a link between perceptions of credibility, performance, and agency autonomy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of the on-going urban transition in developing countries, the quality of the available data, and the uncertainty of existing urban forecasts. Although the recently released United Nations’ publication World Urbanization Prospects is an invaluable resource for those interested in studying urban change, the data in the report are somewhat deceptive in their apparent completeness and beyond the narrow confines of technical demography there is a great deal of misunderstanding and misreporting about what these data mean and how they should be interpreted. For example, while the scale of urban change is unprecedented and the nature and direction of urban change is more dependent on the global economy than ever before, many aspects of the traditional distinction between urban and rural are becoming redundant. This paper provides a broad overview of the available evidence on patterns and trends in urban growth in developing countries, highlighting regional differences where appropriate. The paper also examines the quality of past urban population projections and finds that there has been considerable diversity in their quality by geographic region, level of development, and size of country. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyzes the long-term effects of a liberalized regime of development banking on the growth and investment trajectory of a newly industrializing country using Puerto Rico as a case study. The paper analyzes conflicts between domestic business and the state over the form of state involvement in development during the critical juncture of the 1940s; the leading role of domestic business in the push to liberalize the developmental state project; and the effects this liberalization had on development banking, and on Puerto Rico’s long-term growth trajectory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In questioning the multiple positions of the stakeholders involved in the mining debate in Ecuador, this paper offers an analytical framework to uncover the ‘politics of scale’ of mining discourses. This is done by understanding how discourses are simultaneously structured, disassembled and restructured according to power relations among stakeholders involved in the mining debate. Q methodology is used as a tool to assess the subjective perceptions of key stakeholders regarding mining projects in the country. Results highlight four distinct discourses: (1) responsible extractivism; (2) local self-determination; (3) national economic development; and (4) local economic development. Discursive analyses suggest that mining positions are constructed to contest power in: decision-making, the enactment of values and rights, and the uneven distribution of economic benefits and socio-environmental burdens associated with mining. The analysis also offers insights for enhancing conflict-resolution and depicting the political complexity associated with structural power inequalities among actors implicated in mining conflicts in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper explores the long-term sustainability of Argentina’s specialization in genetically modified (GM) soybean cultivation. We perform an evidence-based assessment of the most relevant economic, social, and environmental implications of the “soybeanization” of Argentinian agriculture. Our diagnostic relies on a combination of published sources and a unique data set drawn from a field survey carried out in 2011 in two provinces of the Argentinian Pampas. This data set allows us to evaluate with a reliable empirical base the socio-economic impacts of GM soybean cultivation. Our analysis suggests a conflict between the success of the “soybeanization” of Argentinian agriculture measured in terms of production and profit records, and the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of this new model of production. On the one hand, GM soybean technological package adoption has increased farm productivity, and reduced the costs per unit produced, resulting in a dramatic increase in profits. On the other hand, the specialization of Argentinian agriculture on soybean cultivation has increased the dependence of public finances on the foreign exchange revenue generated by exports earnings. We also find a mixed empirical picture of changing land distribution patterns and labor displacement resulting from GM soybean expansion. Finally, we find that the environmental implications of agricultural biotechnology appear alarming and the long-term sustainability of GM crops highly questionable. Promoting sustainable agricultural growth has become not only desirable but necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Analysis of employment across 10 occupations in 27 industries in Latin America show high level of gender segregation. • From 1990 to 2018, women's share of good jobs has increased, yet gender gap in access to good jobs remains substantial. • Public social spending is positively and significantly correlated with women's access to good jobs relative to men's. • Industrial upgrading benefits only men. • There is a non-linear relationship between technological advances in industrial sector and the quality of women's employment. Latin America has seen vast improvements in gender educational and health equality. Favorable supply-side conditions, however, have not translated into greater gender economic equality, a process that also depends on structural economic change and global macroeconomic conditions. In this paper, we assess the role of a variety of macro-level policies and structures in influencing trends in women's access to high-quality jobs for a sample of 15 countries in Latin America over the period 1990–2018. Using micro-level data, we first evaluate women's relative share of good jobs, defined in terms of women's weekly earnings in an industry or occupation relative to the national median wage. Further, we econometrically estimate the association between a variety of macro-level variables and the relative quality of women's jobs. Results indicate that the most significant and robust positive correlate of women's relative access to good jobs is public social spending as a share of GDP. Other important macro-covariates include measures of labor market regulation, monetary and fiscal policy, and macroeconomic structure and global orientation, including financial openness. The results suggest that macro-level structures and policies related to globalization that hamper the achievement of greater gender equality can be offset by appropriately targeted government policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We assess how the adoption of a common-law style model affects crime rates, pretrial detention, and judicial efficiency. • There was an increase of 7.05 homicides for every 100000 inhabitants in treated municipalities associated with the reform. • The effect was nonetheless much greater in municipalities that had an established organized crime presence before the reform. • There is a reduction of 16% in the use of pretrial detention for property crimes, but not for homicides. • Our results suggest that most of the negative effects are related to organized crime. This paper assesses how the adoption of a common-law style model affects crime rates, pretrial detention, and judicial efficiency measures. We do this in the context of Mexico, where a judicial reform was fully implemented by 2016, both on the state and federal levels. Using a generalized synthetic control group approach (Xu, 2017) and municipality-level administrative data for the years 1997–2012, we find that the reform increased the homicide rate and was accompanied by a reduction in the use of pretrial detention for property crimes in the early implementer municipalities. The increase in the homicide rate was, nonetheless, much greater in the municipalities with established organized crime presence, where we also observed a greater reduction in the capacity to effectively prosecute homicides. Our results describe the difficulties in implementing this kind of reform in developing countries experiencing security crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In this paper we investigate whether coffee farms that have been granted in-house socio-environmental certification from a global buyer, display better social and environmental conduct compared to non-certified farms. We perform an econometric analysis using data from an original cross-country survey covering 575 farms in various regions of Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico. We find that farms that have been granted in-house certification demonstrate better environmental but not better social conduct than non-certified farms. We find also that the positive relationship between in-house certification and environmental conduct is stronger if the farm sells to a cooperative, and if it is located in an institutionally weak country. Finally, we find that the institutional strength of the farm's home country has a positive influence on its social conduct. We discuss how our analysis contributes to the literature on the social and environmental impacts of certifications, and to scholarship in global value chains’ social and environmental upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The study of vote-buying has generally focused on the distributive strategies of political parties at the expense of assessing its effectiveness. • We study the correlation between electoral handouts and voting behavior using surveys from 37 elections in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. • The distribution of election handouts and voting preferences show little correlation, especially in sub-Saharan African elections. Vote-buying—or the pre-electoral distribution of private goods in exchange for support at the ballot box—is often blamed for the poor economic performance of many developing countries. By pressuring individuals to vote against their own interest, vote-buying may undermine accountability and the implementation of sound development policies. Yet, these effects depend on it leading to electoral outcomes that would not have occurred otherwise. In this paper we use survey data from 17 sub-Saharan African elections between 2000 and 2005 and 20 Latin American elections between 2005 and 2010 to show that, despite its widespread prevalence, vote-buying has a limited electoral impact on average: in only 11 of 37 elections are gifts-for-votes practices correlated with higher turnout; yet, in only very few elections could have these gifts translated into visible electoral advantages for a particular party. This contrasts with common perceptions about the effectiveness of electoral handouts and the quality of the elections in these regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper demonstrates gender bias against women and girls in the timing of birth registration in Mexico. • It leverages a dataset of roughly 80 million birth records to investigate when citizens obtain documents. • The analysis shows that delays in registration decrease when obtaining documents provides tangible benefits for citizens. • The introduction of the CCT program Progresa is associated with shorter delays in registration among younger cohorts. • The introduction of the CCT program Progresa is associated with an increase in registration among women. Despite recent advances, many low and middle-income countries do not have a comprehensive system for civil registration. Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal of providing 'legal identity for all' therefore requires an effort to ensure timely birth registration among societal groups that have remained at the margins. Timely registration is crucial for the effective guarantee of individual identities, since delays are associated with under-registration, and incorrect records. The paper examines gender inequality in registration. Based on demographic data for Mexico, a higher middle-income country that has recently made considerable progress with regard to birth registration, it shows that gender bias is expressed not only in the under-registration of girls, but also in systematically longer delays compared to their male counterparts. To understand this, the paper conceptualizes registration as an informed decision by citizens about the perceived costs and benefits of obtaining documents. The paper leverages a novel data source – a dataset of roughly 80 million records for births registered by the Mexican state between 1985 and 2014 – to investigate not just whether citizens obtain documents, but also when they do so. The analysis demonstrates that delays in registration decrease when obtaining documents provides tangible benefits for citizens. The introduction of Progresa, a conditional cash transfer program targeting poor households, is associated with shorter delays in registration among younger cohorts, and an increase in registration among women. Positive incentives for registration thus ensure that parents actively seek documents for their children. Conditional cash transfer programs, which operate in many countries, can play an important role in creating such incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper measures the Quality of Employment (QoE) from a multidimensional perspective in nine Latin American countries. • The index includes three dimensions: income, job security and employment conditions. • Using the Alkire/Foster method, it constructs a synthetic indicator of the QoE that identifies the most vulnerable workers. • This paper highlights important differences between the QoE in different Latin American countries. • While Chile has the best results in the region, Paraguay has the worst, followed by Mexico, Bolivia and Peru. This paper proposes a methodology for measuring the quality of employment from a multidimensional and public policy perspective in Latin American developing countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay) using household and labour force survey data from 2015. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the QoE can be measured using a multidimensional methodology that can inform policy makers about the state of their labour markets in a way that complements traditional variables such as participation or unemployment rates, which are not always good indicators of labour market performance in developing countries with large informal sectors. Building on the framework of the capability approach as well as on previous work on multidimensional poverty, we use the Alkire/Foster (AF) method to construct a synthetic indicator of the quality of employment (QoE) at an individual level. We select three dimensions that must be considered as both instrumentally and intrinsically important to workers and the functions and capabilities generated by their employment situation: income, job security and employment conditions. Job security is then divided into two sub-dimensions (occupational status and job tenure), as is employment conditions (social security affiliation and excessive working hours). A threshold is then established within each dimension and sub-dimension to determine whether a person is deprived or not within each dimension, before establishing an overall cut-off line and calculating composite levels of deprivation. The results generated by this indicator are, first, highly relevant to policy makers as they allow for the precise identification of groups of vulnerable workers as well as of dimensions and indicators, which contribute to deprivation in the labour market. Second, they extend the debate about employment in developing countries to variables not commonly considered by the literature as being critical to the well-being of workers and their dependents, such as occupational status and job tenure. Third, this paper highlights important difference between Latin American countries, both in terms of the overall QoE Index result as well as its component dimensions. While Chile presents the best results in the region, Paraguay presents the worst, followed by Mexico, Bolivia and Peru. However, Chile, Peru, Columbia and Brazil, for example, have the biggest problem with job rotation. Finally, the paper highlights that low rates of unemployment are not necessarily related to low rates of deprivation in terms of the QoE. In fact, in some countries analysed (e.g. Mexico) the opposite is true. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper provides an historical review of public policies and developments in Mexico's petroleum and mining sectors. • It finds that recent changes to extractive policies in Mexico largely correspond to the model of "new extractivism". • Programs have been introduced to channel resource rents to regions where extractive activities are concentrated. • These programs have funded highly visible social infrastructure, without transparency or accountability. • Plans to accelerate rates of extraction do not address the demand of affected populations to decide whether or not to accept extractive projects. This article analyzes shifts in the political economic conditions of extractive activities in Mexico during the twentieth century until the present, with a focus on the current era and the first months of López Obrador's presidency. The center of attention is on the mining and petroleum sectors, not only because of their strategic importance for economic development, but also because of the large and growing number of eco-territorial conflicts that have emerged around projects in these two sectors across the country. The paper points to the ways in which Mexico's laws and public policies have been reoriented in recent years to capture rent derived from mining and petroleum activities in order to finance social policies and infrastructure development, focusing spending on regions where extractive activities take place. In what ways does this policy reorientation reflect the "new extractivism" practiced differentially by progressive governments in South America since the first decade of the new millennium? What is "new" about these policies in the historical context of extractive and industrial development in Mexico? How do recently introduced programs to finance local development projects seek to resolve conflicts around extractive activities? Based on an extensive literature review combined with over ten years of ongoing field research on extractive industries and social environmental conflicts in Mexico, this article discusses how focalized rent-redistribution programs have been implemented alongside reforms to open the petroleum and mining sectors to private and foreign investment, in an effort to accelerate extraction rates. It finds that, while these programs seek to compensate directly affected populations and thereby garner their support for extractive projects, they do not address the most fundamental demand of most community-based resistance movements, which is to effectively exercise the right to decide whether or not to accept these projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Investment varies across municipalities depending on mayoral political alignment. • Pork-barrelling is due to the electoral interests of the central government. • There is no electoral motifs when investment is administered to citizen committees. • Social capital reduces the margin for arbitrary allocations of investment. • The implications for grant design and metropolitan governance are discussed. This paper analyses the incidence of political factors and social capital on the allocation of public investment in the Santiago Metropolitan Area, Chile. Considering panel data on a decentralized investment program distributed through local governments and a program that is geared directly to citizen organizations, the paper explores whether investment is equally subject to electoral concerns and rent seeking under different program designs. Our estimations show that decentralized investment favours aligned municipalities where competition is stronger, but long-lasting local leaders also seek their own benefits. By contrast, transfers directly channelled to beneficiaries are free from political clout and, additionally, there is no sign of capture by organized interests. Based on these results, the paper discusses the implications for metropolitan governance, highlighting the potential role of the local social capital and a two-tier governance scheme to retain the gains from decentralization, acquire economies of scale in metropolitan service provision and reduce the margin for pork barrelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper investigates the relationship between health outcomes at birth and fetal exposure to temperature shocks in rural Colombia during 1999–2008. We overcome a limitation of previous studies, confined by small samples and restricted areas, by using records on nearly 1.5 million births. We exploit variations in exposure to temperature shocks by municipality and by year and month of conception in a fixed effects model. We find that exposure to moderate heat waves during the third trimester of pregnancy reduces the birthweight of the infant by about 4.1 g. Furthermore, exposure to moderate cold shocks during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy reduces the length at birth by 0.014–0.018 cm. We also find evidence of the negative effects of heat weaves in Apgar tests at a magnitude of −0.2 to −0.6 percentage points of the normal Apgar score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper builds on the case study work into conflict between mining firms and nearby communities through a statistical analysis of the determinants of social conflict at the local level in the mining sector in Latin America. The analysis is based on an original dataset of 640 geo-located mining properties at the advanced exploration stage and above, which includes GIS information on environment and land-use patterns around the property, sub-national socio-economic characteristics of the population, firm and mining property characteristics, as well as information about known social conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary While recent literature has pointed to a positive effect of migrants’ remittances on the financial development of receiving countries, findings with respect to access to and the use of loans have been ambiguous. This paper investigates the effect of remittances on the use of formal and informal financial services using Mexican household data and finds positive and statistically significant effects of remittances on the ownership of savings accounts, the existence of debts, and on recent borrowing. The fact that the effect of remittances on borrowing is driven by informal finance rather than by traditional bank loans points to deficiencies of the formal financial sector in addressing the financial needs of remittance-receiving households. We address methodological concerns of selection bias and reverse causality through household fixed effects and an instrumental strategy that exploits distance to train lines and labor market conditions in the US as exogenous determinants of remittances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper shows that workers who do not receive legally mandated benefits due to employer noncompliance take a negative perspective – not only toward the employer as it has been documented – but also against the state. They consider that the state did not protect their rights, and hence feel fewer obligations to comply with their duties as citizens. Using a list experiment, as well as household data from nine Latin American countries, we show that nonregistered workers are less likely to obey the law, pay taxes, and vote compared to registered workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper summarizes a study of changes in per-capita income, monetary poverty, and income distribution in 9,045 subnational administrative units of nine Latin American countries between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s. The results largely support spatial convergence of mean household incomes, although the estimates indicate it has been slow. Territorial inequality is found to be persistent and reduces the pro-poor effect of local income growth. Although national-context specific, the estimates also indicate that territorial development dynamics are influenced by the structural features of the territories. In view of the evidence, territorial development policies in Latin America seem well warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper analyzes the extent to which transformative territorial coalitions can deliberately change the exclusive structures that afflict rural territories in Latin America. A historical comparison of three rural territorial dynamics in Ecuador demonstrates that deliberate planning is not necessary to promote an inclusive and equitable economic dynamic if a long historical process has created favorable territorial social structures. When territories do not have such social structures, they are more likely to require a strong exogenous shock to create a new and inclusive economic organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper, which follows the emergence of the salmon industry in the 1990s in Chiloé, Chile, demonstrates that factors restricting women’s participation in labor force and wage differences between women and men are related to the gender systems operating in Chiloe. Results indicate that these systems reflect the territory’s demographic and agrarian history and that local gender systems have a positive influence on women’s participation in the labor market, though this is not accompanied by decreased salary discrimination in the salmon industry. The implication is that territory-specific and gender factors must be considered in national employment policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary A growing number of extraterritorial private-sector actors, often in partnership with the state, are expanding the frontiers of extractive and primary export economies to new rural territories in Latin America. This paper analyzes the conditions that might drive meaningful efforts to address environmental problems in territories dominated by large, externally controlled natural resource-based activities. It studies three cases: salmon aquaculture in Chiloé (Chile), fruit growing in O’Higgins (Chile), and gas production in Tarija (Bolivia). We conclude that such efforts are unlikely to occur unless environmental problems directly threaten the short-term viability of the activities or social movements emerge to demand change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Linkage to dynamic markets is a key factor in understanding why different rural territories in Latin America perform differently. This paper combines two conceptual frameworks (from the new economic geography and economic sociology) for an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms that operate in this linkage and to identify key factors that allow for inclusive economic development. This analysis considers three rural territories that exemplify market linkages frequently observed in Latin America, where, although high transaction costs and limited access to financial capital prevail, other types of capital (social, cultural, and human capital) available to rural dwellers can be mobilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This article is the introduction to a volume containing findings from a program conducted over five years in 11 Latin America countries, to answer three questions: (1) Are there rural territories that have experienced simultaneous economic growth, poverty reduction, and improved distribution of income?; (2) What factors determine these territorial dynamics?, and; (3) What can be done to stimulate and promote this kind of territorial dynamics? The article outlines the analytical and policy issues and the methodology, summarizes the remaining 10 papers in the collection, and presents a conceptual framework that itself is one of the results of the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a difference-in-difference strategy to evaluate a program in Guatemala that expanded access to health services through two contracting modalities. In the contracting-out model NGOs were responsible for all administrative and clinical procedures, while in the contracting-in model NGOs focused on administrative tasks and employed public employees to provide services. The evaluation design allows comparing results across both contracting models as well as with an area that did not receive additional services. Both models achieved modest results regarding immunization coverage and prenatal care, though contracting in performed slightly better. We also compare program phases and discuss policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]