Kenneth P. Jameson

Religious values and social limits to development

Abstract The reassessment of the experience of development calls for a reevaluation of the relationship between development and religion. While the traditional view which concentrated on the entrepreneur has continued importance, changes in the context of development require new thought on the subject. A view which sees religion as a major factor in the moral base of the society and consequently as a social limit on development is likely to provide a more fruitful view of how religion and development intertwine. It suggests that there are four areas of mutual influence: on the character development of actors in development efforts; as a resistant force to the dominant definitions of development; as a positive impulse toward a well-founded definition and process of development; and finally as an institutional transnational actor in matters of development. The papers in this volume deal with many facets of these questions, as noted in the present paper.

Latin American structuralism: A methodological perspective

Abstract Latin American structuralism has played a central role in the debates on economic development theory and policy since the 1950s.The career of Raul Prebisch has mirrored the trajectory of structuralism and can provide it an historical context. After noting the importance of structuralism, the article isolates its main tenets. It then places Latin American structuralism within the methodological tradition of structuralism which includes writers such as Piaget, Levi-Strauss and Chomsky in other disciplines. Methodological the key to the success of Latin American structuralism is its ability to isolate a deep structure of the international economy and to center its analysis around it. The understanding of the domestic economy and of short-run policy problems is less satisfactory. After a brief eclipse during the late 1970s, Latin American structuralism is currently a vital mode of understanding development problems, in this case through its marriage with a more formal, mathematical approach to knowledge originating in the United States.

Dollar Bloc Dependency in Latin America: Beyond Bretton Woods

The international financial regime is undergoing a significant transition as the Bretton Woods regime weakens and new norms and principles emerge. One change is the emergence of “currency blocs” which serve to stabilize regional financial relations. This paper argues that Latin America and the U.S. are linked in an emerging dollar bloc that has created a new form of Latin American dependency. The centrality of the dollar in the financial structure of Latin America is documented, and an overview of the historical currency blocs, the sterling and franc blocs, is provided. This historical treatment provides the basis for an analysis of the mechanisms and operation of the dollar bloc and for an assessment of the current factors in its evolution. Three specific issues are investigated: the adjustments to the rules and decision-making in the dollar bloc that are currently in progress, the relation of the dollar bloc to the re-democratization of Latin America, and the international financial context provided by the European Monetary System and the growth in the yens importance.

Measuring the effect of bi-directional migration remittances on poverty and inequality in Nicaragua

This article examines the impact of migrants’ remittances on poverty and income distribution in Nicaragua. Nicaraguan emigrants are fairly evenly distributed between the US and Costa Rica. Poorer migrants overwhelmingly migrate to Costa Rica; richer migrants favour the US. This bi-directional flow provides an opportunity to examine the distributional impacts of remittances in a situation that offers distinct opportunities to different groups of prospective migrants. To this end, we use Heckmans (1979) sample selection method to predict counterfactual ‘no-migration’ consumption figures for Nicaraguan households whose members have emigrated. Using these estimates, we are able to compare the current situation to one in which migration had not occurred. We find that migration to Costa Rica results in increased per capita household consumption for poor households, while migration to the US leads to increase in middle class households. The rate, depth and severity of poverty as measured by the Foster, Greer, Thorbecke Indices (Foster et al., 1984) decrease, though only slightly. However, inequality appears to increase, likely because the middle class benefits from US migration, while the poor tend to make it no farther than Costa Rica.

The determinants of Latin American exchange rate regimes

The experience of the last thirty years suggests that a wide range of factors affects policymakers’ choice of exchange rate regime. The initial explanation was that changes in the international sphere dominated domestic policies and strongly influenced how governments decided among the trade-offs. More recently, domestic political factors’ influence on the choice of exchange rate regimes have been emphasized, providing detailed and rich insights into the dynamics of the choice. Neither approach has been entirely successful. Both internal and external factors must be taken into account. This article builds on previous empirical work and takes into account domestic and international influences on the choice of exchange rate regimes in Latin America between 1964 and 1996. In addition, we highlight a variety of ‘interactions’, choices of economic policy that are affected by both national and international pressures and that, in turn, influence the choice of exchange rate regime. The empirical model uses multinomial ordered logit analysis to determine the factors in exchange rate determination and to compare the explanatory of the models with and without the interaction variables.

Education's role in rural areas of Latin America

Abstract Large rural surveys from Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Paraguay are used to examine the role of education. Three frameworks which explain the effects of education are explored: the human capital-productivity approach, the modernizing environment approach, and the political economic-social differentiation framework. The main conclusion is that education has a consistently important effect which differs across countries. It is strongest in the modernizing environment context and is consistently related to social differentiation, except in Guatemala. Education has a positive and significant relation with rural productivity in Bolivia and the Dominican Republic, though not in Paraguay or Guatemala.

A critical examination of ‘the patterns of development’

The decline in the share of agriculture and increase in secondary productions share have generally been found to accompany changes in per capita income. Cross‐section data have long exhibited such a ‘pattern of development’. Recent panel information combining cross‐section and time‐series data seemed to extend the behaviour to time series. Using analysis of co‐variance tests for such patterns over time, the paper rejects the assumption of homogeneous patterns over time. In addition 45 per cent of the individual countries deviate from the expected time series pattern. Thus such patterns certainly do appear in cross‐sections, but their existence across countries over time is not confirmed.

Socialism and development: Editors' introduction

Abstract There is now sufficient socialist development experience that efforts to learn from its variety can be very fruitful. To some degree all such experience must be interpreted in comparison with the dominant models of socialism, the Soviet Union and China. This paper has drawn upon those countries, and other socialist countries to suggest a set of central questions which will appear in any socialist development pattern. The papers which follow, and which have been introduced in the course of this paper, provide much greater detail and specificity on the questions. The first large grouping of papers examines specific country experience in order to provide an empirical base for dealing with ‘socialist’ countries. A second group of papers examines in depth the questions of strategy and of organization. Finally, the ‘political’ side of political economic analysis is highlighted in the three papers which deal with the transition to socialism, human rights, and womens emancipation.

Higher education in a vacuum: stress and reform in Ecuador

Ecuador‘s higher education system mirrors that of other Latin American countries in its many internal and external stresses. It also provides an opportunity to view a reform process occurring in a vacuum of central government influence and authority, one whose direction is largely set by the universities in response to perceived stresses. Those stresses arise from the differentiation of the system in the last decade, questions about the role of higher education in Ecuador, and the absence of governmental direction. Changes in higher education in Ecuador must be examined in the context of higher education‘s role in development. The paper notes the case for the importance of higher education and the new theoretical support for higher education that endogenous growth models provide. It then examines the self-generated reform process which is occurring in Ecuador in the areas of teaching, of student access and of university finance. The final issue addressed is the relation between these changes, with their important implications for transforming the higher education system, and the development needs of Ecuador. There are many positive elements to the reform process which will contribute to development. However, until the government policy vacuum is filled, their potential benefit will remain only partially realized.

Institutions and development: what a difference geography and time make!

Ha-Joon Chang, in his article ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy, and History’, provides a description and critique of the mainstream view of institutions and development. It applies well to Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the effort to introduce these Anglo-American institutional structures (Global Standard Institutions; GSIs) in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in uneven and unstable economic performance, not development. As a result, the relationship among institutions, development and economic policy in Latin America today has generally moved far beyond this ‘mainstream’. The institutions to insure macro stability have generally been preserved, and some countries do follow GSI prescriptions. However in most countries, especially in South America, the effort to find the right mix of institutions for development has moved far beyond this mainstream. The result has been innovative initiatives to address more fundamental development issues such as inequality, property rights and international economic institutions. This process is likely to continue, facilitated by the currently robust democratic political systems that grew out of the earlier turmoil.