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There has been a change in international politics since the 2008 financial crisis, thanks to a greater spread of economic resources and military capabilities. For many, it is a radical transformation that could spell the end of US hegemony in Latin America. This paper examines the proposition, beginning with a review of the concept of hegemony, which rather than being viewed as a structural characteristic is conceived of here as a "nuanced hegemony", in other words a network of asymmetric and hierarchical relations. We can observe not just one transformation then, but the emergence of a hemispheric context that could be described as "differentiated hegemony". The United States still occupies a central position, but its foreign policy is marked by subregional fragmentation and the externalisation of electoral priorities. The paper explores the effects at subregional level, focusing on the opportunities and challenges it presents to Latin American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world of growing international competition and rivalry between China and the United States, Latin America and the European Union (EU) are caught in the same thorny dilemma. Positioned between these global giants, both regions are facing a retorn to a Westphalian system of nation-states, which undermines their roles as emerging regional players. In view of these new global challenges in Latin America and the EU, this paper uses a qualitative and comparative approach to explore foreign policy discourses on autonomy in both regions. It examines their goals and priorities and assesses the potential regional and interregional consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent electoral successes of right-wing and far-right actors in different parts of the world have prompted discussion on various topics: the causes of their rise, their characteristics and strategies, the motivations of electorates and the depth of the right-wing shifts in a range of societies. This paper proposes key themes for systematising this debate and some clues to understanding the rise of the right in such diverse and heterogeneous national realities. It also suggests recovering a constructivist conceptualisation of "authoritarian traditions" in order to analyse the mobilisation strategies, behaviour and coordination of right-wing groups from a perspective that highlights their dynamic and innovative nature. This approach allows us to (re)think authoritarianism as the result of symbolic practices and discourses that are assembled, (re)invented and updated to serve various purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of who owns large companies and how they are organised is overdue in the study of Latin American elites, especially at transnational level. It is a limitation that has hampered debates on the emergence of transnational business elites in the region. This paper identifies the owners of the largest companies in Latin America and analyses the networks they form. The results reveal the formation of an interlocking ownership network between a small number of transnational owners, most of whom are financial corporations in the United States and Europe. These findings allow us to discuss regional integration and the dominance of economic models imported from those territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an empirical analysis of how US unconventional monetary policy has affected Latin American countries. First, we estimate the effects of US monetary policy announcements on sovereign bond interest rates, exchange rates, and stock market indices for a set of emerging countries, including five Latin American economies. We found that QE announcements in 2008/2009 and the tapering talk in 2013 generated sizable sovereign yield and exchange rate fluctuations. We further find, just in a few cases, some excessive response of asset prices in Latin American countries. In the second part of the paper, we estimate a simple model that measures the influence of country-specific macroeconomic fundamentals on the transmission of US financial disturbances. An estimated model including the inflation rate, the CDS spread, the ratio of official reserves and market capitalization explains some of the observed cross-country heterogeneity of spillovers from US monetary policy announcements. Under this model, a greater impact from the normalization of US monetary policy can be expected in Latin America relative to other emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the principal concepts of social class, occupation, and social stratification, and their contribution to the analysis of the social determinants of health (SDH), and reviews empirical studies conducted in Latin America that use employment relations as an SDH. The review focuses on studies of the relationship between health and social class based on neo-Weberian or neo-Marxist perspectives. A search of the BIREME Virtual Health Library and the SciELO database found 28 articles meeting these characteristics. This relative dearth contrasts with the profusion of papers that use these approaches written in Europe and in the United States, with a long tradition in the analysis of SDH. In this regard, the political and programmatic implications of research on social class and employment relations are different from and complementary to studies of health gradients associated with income and education. Globalization of employment relations requires the development of new concepts to explain and measure the mechanisms of action of the SDH going beyond what is strictly labor related; in particular, the importance in the current Latin American reality of the impact of informal work on health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the legacies of the financial crisis in the United States and Europe is the adoption of macroprudential policies in an increasing number of countries, including in Latin America. These policies aim to prevent future financial crises through the adoption of far-reaching reforms that involve changing the institutional framework for monetary and financial policies, using models and indicators to monitor the buildup of systemic risks, and utilizing instruments designed to prevent the materialization of those risks. The objective of this paper is to examine the institutional aspects of macroprudential policy in Latin America. In particular, it assesses the strengths and weaknesses of existing institutional models and offers suggestions to improve the effectiveness of those models. The analysis focuses on the two main institutional arrangements that exist in this region, the "Pacific" model which includes countries like Chile, Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica and Mexico, and the "Atlantic" model, which includes countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prawns of the genus Macrobrachium with economic and fishing interest are well known and exploited in almost all coastal communities in Latin America. However they have not been properly studied and their conservation is at risk. The economic, social and cultural characteristics in most countries in the region have resulted in habitat degradation and overfishing, consequently, the populations of this genus of aquatic macro invertebrates are endangered. From this, it follows that all these are poorly studied, and their population status is not known, although in the case of M. amazonicum there are numerous studies. Culture techniques is the area in which more reasearch hs been done. This paper summarizes the knowledge we have on native species of Macrobrachium in Latin America and discusses their economic importance and conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper offers a few notes on the impact of North-American films in Latin American society in the 1920's and 1930s, based on Latin- American stories produced during that period. The analysis will be guided mainly by the notions of mimetic desire (Girard) and cinema situation (Mauerhofer), as well as by the updated motif of the double (and its "realist" substitute, the doublé), in such a context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an expanded, more thorough version of a paper presented at the Seminar on Development Theory about the international crisis, hosted by the UNAM Institute for Economic Research. It includes a historical and theoretical introduction, followed by three parts and a. brief conclusion. The three parts are a) relations between the world crisis and the U.S. economy; b) the current course of the crisis, its localization in Western Europe, and probable international consequences, and c) the consequences for Mexico in the more general framework of Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the determinants of bank performance between Latin American and U.S. institutional environment. For a sample of 111 banks of six Latin American countries and the United States over the period 1997-2010, our results show the existence of significant differences in bank performance between the two institutional settings. Specifically, U.S. banks show higher performance levels compared to Latin America, which may be explained by the greater administrative efficiency associated with total assets. On the other hand, our results show that the predominant Latin American diversification through non-traditional banking activities has a positive effect on the performance of banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests whether financial leverage fluctuates in a way which is consistent with the existence of a target leverage or, on the contrary, it freely fluctuates with the observed changes on stock returns. Using a sample of non-financial publicly-traded firms of 5 Latin-American countries and the US in the period 2000-2007, we find that firms allow their leverages fluctuate almost one to one with stock returns variations. This evidence does not mean at all that firms are not involve in corporate debt issuing activity but they do not care too much about hit a particular target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows the lead of some of the findings of the author `s previous research, which seeks to learn about and identify the structural characteristics that define the production of knowledge on communication within the research done by the Working Teams GT (Grupos de Trabajo) of the Latin American Association of Communication Researchers (ALAIC) between 1998 and 2004. Among the salient features of the relationship and the weight that embody the structure of the scientific practices and strategies in the production of GT-1 7 of ALAIC is the relationship between its scientific assets and the main perspective of communication studies embraced by the collective under study: a socio-cultural and cross-disciplinary perspective of the study of communication in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a minimalist approach to the recently created Community of South American Nations. Based on the experience of the currently weakened process of integration it argues that the principles of concentration, gradualism and concreteness are essential to future actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]