The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 shook the foundations of the global economy. What began as a localised currency crisis soon engulfed the entire Asian region. What went wrong and how did the Asian economies, long considered 'miracles', respond? How did the United States, Japan and other G-7 countries react to the crisis? What role did the IMF play? Why did China, which suffers from many of…
The year 1997 marked the end of a cycle of growth in Latin America that enabled a number of countries to make significant strides in reducing poverty. The turning point in this process was the Asian crisis, which ushered in a five-year stretch of slower economic growth,higher unemployment and unchanging (or, in many cases, rising) poverty indices in the region. It may be said, without exaggerat…
The 2000-2001 edition of the Social Panorama of Latin America provides new poverty estimates for the countries of the region based on household surveys conducted around 1999, together with recent statistics on the distribution of in-come,employment and unemployment. It also examines the levels of public ex-penditure allocated to social sectors, the status of Latin American households and the ma…
The 1999-2000 edition of the Social Panorama of Latin America examines the growing social vulnerability of the population, the main features of the pattern of occupational stratification associated with newly emerging modes of development, the living conditions of children and adolescents and of older adults, which are two particularly vulnerable groups, and the institutional and social implica…
This document contains an analysis of and statistics on the economic performance of the region as a whole and of individual Latin American and Caribbean countries in 2002. It shows a 0.5% decline in regional economic activity, leading to a fall in per capita gross domestic product below 1997 levels and thus completing half a lost decade" for the region as a whole. South American economies, part…
The severe slowdown in the world economy in 2001 cut short the recovery that had begun in 2000 and dashed hopes that Latin America and the Caribbean were about to embark upon a new growth cycle. Unlike the crises of the 1990s, which were confined to a limited group of countries, the slowdown of 2001 engulfed the region as a whole. The impact of the adverse international environment impinged upo…
The 2000-2001 edition of Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy is divided into three sections. The first section (chapters I,II and III) examines the international situation and international trade activity in Latin America and the Caribbean. It describes the main trends in the international economy and their impact on the economies of the region and looks at the international tr…
The Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean is prepared annually by the Economic Development Division in collaboration with the Statistics and Economic Projections Division, the ECLAC subregional headquarters in Mexico and Port of Spain and ECLAC national offices in Argentina and Brazil.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to Latin America and the Caribbean dwindled for the second year in a row in 2001, and preliminary data for 2002 show no signs of a recovery. This trend was observed in both greenfield investment and mergers, acquisitions and privatizations. The investments announced by transnational corporations (TNCs) for the coming years remain concentrated in the service…
This study seeks to provide greater insight into foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America and the Caribbean. A corporate strategy-based analytical framework has been used to interpret the copious yet heterogeneous information available on the subject. The research programme employed by the Unit on Investment and Corporate Strategies is structured around the examination of specific situa…