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In this paper, the effects of economic growth and four different types of energy consumption (oil, natural gas, hydroelectricity, and renewable energy) on environmental quality in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were examined within the framework of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for three Latin American countries, namely, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, from 1975 to 2018. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) in the form of Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) was used to verify the validity of the EKC hypothesis and the impacts of the variables in the short and the long run alike. Furthermore, the Toda-Yamamoto Granger causality test was carried out to identify the direction of causality between the variables. From ARDL-ECM estimation, the EKC was confirmed (inverted U-shaped curve between income growth and CO2 emissions) only in Argentina in the long run but not in Brazil and Chile. Based on the findings, renewable energy can have a great potential in reducing CO2 emissions in the future, but this advantage has not been fully exploited yet since a significant negative impact on CO2 emissions was only found in Chile. Also, the use of other less carbon-intensive energy sources such as natural gas and hydropower if they could be combined with renewable energy would be of great benefit and contribute to enhancing environmental quality and energy security in the short and the medium term and to successful low-carbon energy transition in the long run in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Brazilian Journal of Management / Revista de Administração da UFSM is the property of Brazilian Journal of Management / Revista de Administracao da UFSM and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Latin American countries begin to develop their national-level cyber policy including their cybersecurity strategy. The paper aims to provide a comparative analysis of the strategy development processes in six Latin American countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. The methodology is based on a mixed approach. For the quantitative analysis, the National Cyber Security Index and UNIDIR Cyber Policy Portal were used, while for the qualitative analysis a document analysis was carried out on the national strategies. Analysing national data based on the NCSI, Chile stands out overall, however, the country is still in the initial phase in terms of digital and essential service protection, personal data protection and cyber crisis management. Brazil's position is interesting, standing at 3rd place overall, being the most targeted country by cyberattacks in the region. Brazil stands out in terms of cyber threat analysis and military cyber operations. Based on the document analysis, Chile and Argentina have a more holistic cybersecurity strategy, including factors such as cybersecurity education, cybercrime detection, regulatory framework, and the aim to cooperate with international and industrial partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers the role that public service announcements (PSAs) play in addressing violence against women (VAW) in Latin America. Using content analysis, the study examines 407 PSAs about VAW from 20 Latin American countries. The results show that 62.3% of the PSAs encourage bystanders to denounce violence while portraying women as victims in 48.8% of the PSAs. However, 71.7% of PSAs did not include a helpline or how to report the crime, only 11.8% of the PSAs have non-narrative, or factual information, about VAW, and just 6.4% engage in compelling narrative messaging or storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia & Antropologia is the property of Sociologia & Antropologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objective: Our study analyzes the cost-effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru. Methods: Using a previously published SVEIR model, we analyzed the impact of a vaccination campaign (2021) from a national healthcare perspective. The primary outcomes were quality adjusted life years (QALYs) lost and total costs. Other outcomes included COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and life years. We applied a discount rate of 3% for health outcomes. We modeled a realistic vaccination campaign in each country (the realistic country-specific campaign). Additionally, we assessed a standard campaign (similar, "typical" for all countries), and an optimized campaign (similar in all countries with higher but plausible population coverage). One-way deterministic sensitivity analyses were performed. Findings: Vaccination was health improving as well as cost-saving in almost all countries and scenarios. Our analysis shows that vaccination in this group of countries prevented 573,141 deaths (508,826 standard; 685,442 optimized) and gained 5.07 million QALYs (4.53 standard; 6.03 optimized). Despite the incremental costs of vaccination campaigns, they had a total net cost saving to the health system of US$16.29 billion (US$16.47 standard; US$18.58 optimized). The realistic (base case) vaccination campaign in Chile was the only scenario, which was not cost saving, but it was still highly cost-effective with an ICER of US$22 per QALY gained. Main findings were robust in the sensitivity analyses. Interpretation: The COVID-19 vaccination campaign in seven Latin American and Caribbean countries -that comprise nearly 80% of the region- was beneficial for population health and was also cost-saving or highly cost-effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate and discuss the digital competence of academics at universities, to identify challenges and define recommendations for policy. This study was conducted through collaboration between the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission and Metared of the Universia Foundation, surveying 30,407 participants who present the perceptions of their own digital competence levels. These self-reflections took place in universities in seven countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Portugal, and used the Check-In tool, which consists of 22 questions based on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators--or 'DigCompEdu' framework. A descriptive statistical analysis was performed, followed by a qualitative evaluation. Almost 70% of the academics have an average intermediate level of competence when the data is aggregated, with results varying in each DigCompEdu area according to the specific question asked. There is no significant difference between young and senior academics, as well as between men and women. The results present a discussion of whether the age and gender of educators and their work environment have an impact on their digital competence level, and at the same time highlights the areas in which educators perceive themselves to be most and least competent. It shows how the amount of institutional support that is offered affects the academics' perceptions of their level of digital competence. On the basis of the results, recommendations are presented for higher-education institutions, with the aim of supporting the professional development of their academics.

There is no doubt as to the growing importance of personal data to companies. Along with this fact, there is an exponential growth of data concentration on the hands of the biggest global technology companies. Regulators around the world are taking action in digital markets, either through legislation or judicial enforcement, to address the implications of data concentration. This article analyzes a true paradigm shift in the collaboration between antitrust, data protection and consumer authorities in handling the case of changes to WhatsApp's privacy policy in Argentina, Brazil and Chile. We analyze how the institutional arrangements favored (or not) a more connected and integrated role of different authorities in the investigation of abuses of dominant position, which resulted in a stronger message for actors in the digital market. Institutional factors, such as operational and enforcement capabilities, are also analyzed with regard to the ability and effectiveness of the authorities in these countries to intervene. This article attempts to bring critical considerations in the evaluation of Latin American cases compared with international evolution to drive some useful lessons for future enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customer's trust in vendors' reputation is a key factor that facilitates economic transactions in e-commerce platforms. Although the trust-sales relationship is assumed robust and consistent, its empirical evidence remains neglected for Latin American countries. This work aims to provide a data-driven comprehensive framework for extracting valuable knowledge from public data available in the leading Latin American e-commerce platform with commercial operations in 18 countries. Only Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela showed the highest trust indexes among all nations analyzed. The trust-sales relationship was statistically inconsistent across nations but worked as the most important predictor of sales, followed by purchase intention and price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formulating effective management plans for addressing the impacts of invasive non-native species (INNS) requires the definition of clear priorities and tangible targets, and the recognition of the plurality of societal values assigned to these species. These tasks require a multi-disciplinary approach and the involvement of stakeholders. Here, we describe procedures to integrate multiple sources of information to formulate management priorities, targets, and high-level actions for the management of INNS. We follow five good-practice criteria: justified, evidence-informed, actionable, quantifiable, and flexible. We used expert knowledge methods to compile 17 lists of ecological, social, and economic impacts of lodgepole pines (Pinus contorta) and American mink (Neovison vison) in Chile and Argentina, the privet (Ligustrum lucidum) in Argentina, the yellow-jacket wasp (Vespula germanica) in Chile, and grasses (Urochloa brizantha and Urochloa decumbens) in Brazil. INNS plants caused a greater number of impacts than INNS animals, although more socio-economic impacts were listed for INNS animals than for plants. These impacts were ranked according to their magnitude and level of confidence on the information used for the ranking to prioritise impacts and assign them one of four high-level actions—do nothing, monitor, research, and immediate active management. We showed that it is possible to formulate management priorities, targets, and high-level actions for a variety of INNS and with variable levels of available information. This is vital in a world where the problems caused by INNS continue to increase, and there is a parallel growth in the implementation of management plans to deal with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of crude oil price fluctuations on equity markets for four emerging Latin American markets, namely, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. We adopt an approach that examines this relationship in both a time and frequency domains. The co‐spectral analysis confirmed that most of the observable coherence between crude oil and equity returns occurred at relatively short frequencies. The structural vector autoregression (SVAR) results suggest that shocks to crude oil price directed all equity markets into negative territory, though they typically reversed course after approximately twenty‐four months. Although the decomposition of the prediction error variance showed that crude oil prices were weakly exogenous in the SVAR model, in most cases Brazil's equity market may have been responsible for the higher percentage of variations in the remaining indices. The nonlinear Granger causality tests reveal, with the exception of the Merval index, the equity markets under study were responsive to crude oil price shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fitting Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) models to incidence data is problematic when not all infected individuals are reported. Assuming an underlying SIR model with general but known distribution for the time to recovery, this paper derives the implied differential-integral equations for observed incidence data when a fixed fraction of newly infected individuals are not observed. The parameters of the resulting system of differential equations are identifiable. Using these differential equations, we develop a stochastic model for the conditional distribution of current disease incidence given the entire past history of reported cases. We estimate the model parameters using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte-Carlo sampling of the posterior distribution. We use our model to estimate the transmission rate and fraction of asymptomatic individuals for the current Coronavirus 2019 outbreak in eight American Countries: the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Panama, from January 2020 to May 2021. Our analysis reveals that the fraction of reported cases varies across all countries. For example, the reported incidence fraction for the United States of America varies from 0.3 to 0.6, while for Brazil it varies from 0.2 to 0.4., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.