Poverty Reduction and Growth Perry, Guillermo E; Lopez, J. Humberto; Maloney, William F ...
2006, 02-20-2006, 20060101
eBook, Book
Open access
That raising income levels alleviates poverty, and that economic growth can be more or less effective in doing so, is well known and has received renewed attention in the search for pro-poor growth. ...What is less well explored is the reverse channel: that poverty may, in fact, be part of the reason for a countrys poor growth performance. This more elabborated view of the development process opens the door to the existence of vicious circles in which low growth results in high poverty and high poverty in turn results in low growth. Poverty Reduction and Growth is about the existence of these vicious circles in Latin America and the Caribbean about the ways and means to convert them into virtuous circles in which poverty reduction and high growth reinforce each other. Through its analysis of fresh data and the attention it pays to issues such as the persistent inequality in the region, the role played by various microdeterminants of income, and the potential existence of human capital underinvestment traps, this title should be a valuable contribution to the current regional debate on poverty and growth, a debate that is critical to the design of policies conducive to enhancing welfare in all is dimensions among the poor of Latin America and the Caribbean.
N6.2 mitigates the onset of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in biobreeding diabetes-prone rats, in part, through changes in kynurenine:tryptophan (K:T) ratios. The goal of this pilot study was to determine the ...safety, tolerance, and general immunological response of
N6.2 in healthy subjects. A double-blind, randomized clinical trial in 42 healthy individuals with no known risk factors for T1D was undertaken to evaluate subject responses to the consumption of
N6.2. Participants received 1 capsule/day containing 10
colony-forming units of
N6.2 or placebo for 8 weeks. Comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP), leukocyte subpopulations by complete blood count (CBC) and flow cytometry, serum cytokines, and relevant metabolites in the indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase pathway were assessed.
N6.2 survival and intestinal microbiota was analyzed. Daily and weekly questionnaires were assessed for potential effects of probiotic treatment on general wellness. The administration of
N6.2 did not modify the CMP or CBC of participants suggesting general safety. In fact,
N6.2 administration significantly decreased the occurrence of abdominal pain, indigestion, and cephalic syndromes. As predicted, increased serum tryptophan levels increased resulting in a decreased K:T ratio was observed in the
N6.2 group. Interestingly, immunophenotyping assays revealed that monocytes and natural killer cell numbers were increased significantly after washout (12 weeks). Moreover, an increase of circulating effector Th1 cells (CD45RO
CD183
CD196
) and cytotoxic CD8
T cells subset was observed in the
N6.2 group. Consumption of
N6.2 is well tolerated in adult control subjects, demonstrates systemic impacts on innate and adaptive immune populations, and results in a decreased K:T ratio. These data provide support for the safety and feasibility of using
N6.2 in prevention trials in subjects at risk for T1D.
This trial was registered at http://clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02349360.
Fiscal policy in Latin America has been guided primarily by short-term liquidity targets whose observance was taken as the main exponent of fiscal prudence, with attention focused almost exclusively ...on the levels of public debt and the cash deficit. Very little attention was paid to the effects of fiscal policy on growth and on macroeconomic volatility over the cycle. Important issues such as the composition of public expenditures (and its effects on growth), the ability of fiscal policy to stabilize cyclical fluctuations, and the currency composition of public debt were largely neglected. As a result, fiscal policy has often amplified cyclical volatility and dampened growth. Fiscal Policy, Stabilization, and Growth explores the conduct of fiscal policy in Latin America and its consequences for macroeconomic stability and long-term growth. In particular, the book highlights the procyclical and anti-investment biases embedded in the region's fiscal policies, explores their causes and macroeconomic consequences, and asesses their possible solutions.
The report analyzes potential contagion and spillover effects of the Argentine crisis, from other sources of co-movement or market volatility. The report also examines the impact of the crisis on FDI ...flows as an indicator of potentially long-lasting deteriorative effects of capital flows to the Region. Finally, the paper assesses the impact of the Argentina crisis on individual countries in terms of trade and/or financial links.
The economic successes of China and India are viewed with admiration but also with concern because of the effects that the growth of these Asian economies may have on the Latin American and Caribbean ...(LAC) region. The evidence in China's and India's Challenge to Latin America indicates that certain manufacturing and service industries in some countries have been negatively affected by Chinese and Indian competition in third markets and that LAC imports from China and India have been associated with modest unemployment and adjustment costs in manufacturing industries. The book also provides substantial evidence of positive aggregate effects for LAC economies associated with China's and India's greater presence in world exports, financial flows, and innovation. Chinese and Indian growth is creating new production possibilities for LAC economies, particularly in sectors that rely on natural resources and scientific knowledge.
This report examines the precise nature of the required institutional reforms and provides a framework for their design and implementation. We hope that it will help launch a dialogue among ...policy?makers, civil society, and the academic community in LAC on how best to design and reform institutions—that is, on how to supply institutional reforms to meet new societal demands.
Linkage and candidate gene studies have identified several breast cancer susceptibility genes, but the overall contribution of coding variation to breast cancer is unclear. To evaluate the role of ...rare coding variants more comprehensively, we performed a meta-analysis across three large whole-exome sequencing datasets, containing 26,368 female cases and 217,673 female controls. Burden tests were performed for protein-truncating and rare missense variants in 15,616 and 18,601 genes, respectively. Associations between protein-truncating variants and breast cancer were identified for the following six genes at exome-wide significance (P < 2.5 × 10
): the five known susceptibility genes ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CHEK2 and PALB2, together with MAP3K1. Associations were also observed for LZTR1, ATR and BARD1 with P < 1 × 10
. Associations between predicted deleterious rare missense or protein-truncating variants and breast cancer were additionally identified for CDKN2A at exome-wide significance. The overall contribution of coding variants in genes beyond the previously known genes is estimated to be small.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ
8.
Informality Perry, Guillermo E; Maloney, William F; Arias, Omar ...
2007, 05-16-2007, 20070101
eBook, Book
Open access
Informality: Exit and Exclusion analyzes informality in Latin America, exploring root causes and reasons for and implications of its growth. The authors use two distinct but complementary lenses: ...informality driven by "exclusion" from state benefits or the circuits of the modern economy, and driven by voluntary "exit" decisions resulting from private cost-benefit calculations that lead workers and firms to opt out of formal institutions. They find both lenses have considerable explanatory power to understand the causes and consequences of informality in the region. Informality: Exit and Exclusion concludes that reducing informality levels and overcoming the "culture of informality" will require actions to increase aggregate productivity in the economy, reform poorly designed regulations and social policies, and increase the legitimacy of the state by improving the quality and fairness of state institutions and policies. Although the study focuses on Latin America, its analysis, approach, and conclusions are relevant for all developing countries. Informality: Exit and Exclusion will be of value to professionals and academics studying labor market, social protection, tax, microenterprise development, and urban public policies, and to those working in government, international organizations, research institutions, and universities.
La deuda pública, eit particular la interna, está aumentando sostenidamente en diversos países de la región, pese a los importantes procesos de ajuste fiscal que se han desarrollado desde mediados de ...los años ochenta. Fartículo examina los principales problemas que ello representa para la política pública. En primer lugar, pasa revista a las condiciones de sostenibili-dad de la deuda pública. A continuación, analiza los posibles efectos de las privatizaciones, la acumulación de deuda como contrapartida de la de activos y las obligaciones sin financia-micnto previsto o los pasivos contingentes sobre la sosteni-bilidad en términos de la tasa tolerable de inflación; examina los factores que determinan las expectativas en torno a la sostenibilidad fiscal y los efectos de esas expectativas sobre las tasas de interés y los niveles de deuda sostenibles y, por último, considera la medida en que la gestión de la deuda influye sobre su sostenibilidad y viceversa.
This report focuses not only on the gaps facing Latin America in both education and technology, but especially on the interactions between the two. The central premise of the report is that skills ...and technology interact in important ways, and this relationship is a fundamental reason for the large observed differences in productivity and incomes across countries. This report argues that skills upgrading technological change, and their interaction are major factors behind total factor productivity growth. Skill-biased technological change is indeed being transferred today at faster speeds to LAC countries, as elsewhere. Technological change has been complementary with skill levels in Latin America in the last two decades. It is further estimated that firms have substantially increased the demand for educated workers in the region, particularly workers with tertiary education. This technological transformation appears to be intimately related to patterns of integration in the world economy. Firms in sectors with higher exposure to trade are subject to more competitive pressures. Adopting and adapting more advanced technologies and hiring and training more educated workers is one way to respond to this pressure to become more productive. The increased potential demand for education offers the possibility to accelerate productivity growth in the economy by closing the educational and technological gaps that Latin American countries exhibit with respect to their peers.
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