The Brazilian Perspective on Emerging Leaders

Despite some short-term benefits, trade deviation to the region shouldn’t be expected to last. Has the U.S. trade war with China been good for Latin America? An increase in Chinese demand for primary products from the region, as well as recent news of production transfers from China to Mexico, might give the impression that it has. But any positive short-term effects of the confrontation should also take into account its negative medium- and long-term impacts on the region and on gl ...

Argentina’s peso tumbled and stocks plunged after last Sunday’s primary elections. The perception of a likely victory of President Macri’s opponents – Alberto Fernandez, and running mate, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner - has sparked a new shift in investor preferences away from peso assets, pressures on the exchange rate, and hikes on sovereign spreads. Unless fears of a return to policies prevailing before Macri are assuaged, the market rout tends to deepen as a negative feedback ...

Brazil's economic recovery after the deep 2015-16 recession has been the slowest on record, with GDP per capita last year remaining more than 9% below its pre-crisis peak (Chart 1, right side). The IMF's annual report on the country's economy, released two weeks ago, estimated current GDP to be nearly 4% below its potential level, which suggests insufficiency of aggregate demand (Chart 1, left side). On the other hand, as the slow recovery reflects structural factors, it i ...

Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have two financing windows, with different terms, dedicated to low- and middle-income countries. Countries are presumed to cross those windows as their income per capita rises, with middle-income countries (MICs) eventually “graduating” to a non-client status once they reach some criteria. However, due to what may be called “middle-income traps”, such progression toward graduation has been limited to a small number of countries. ...

Twenty years after negotiations began between Mercosur and the European Union (EU), a trade agreement between ministers was reached last Friday in Brussels. Its first phase, from 1999 to 2014, had among the motivations on the European side not to be left behind while the US then pursued a Free Trade Agreement for Latin America (FTAA). Symptomatically, such enthusiasm cooled after FTAA negotiations came to a halt and the United States embarked on bilateral agreements with some c ...

This paper estimates the socioeconomic impacts of the emergence and expansion of e-hailing services in São Paulo, Brazil. Combining data from a major service provider, individual level data from a representative travel diary survey and a structural traffic network simulation, we evaluate the impact of e-hailing on commuters' travel time and accessibility. We then estimate the effect of these changes on workers' productivity. Finally, using a Spatial Computable General Equilibrium (S ...

Throughout my last 15 years working in multilateral institutions, many times around the world I was asked to speak about the success of poverty reduction in Brazil during the new millennium. Last week, someone who was on such an occasion in October 2013 in Nairobi asked me what my numbers had become after these recent years of precarious macroeconomic performance and high unemployment in the country. I replied that they have changed ... in part! Indeed, the fact that, even without ...

China's push for Latin American consumers reflects changes back home. Chinese financing in Latin America is changing. After becoming a major source of capital flows to Latin America and the Caribbean over the past 15 years, a more diverse range of investors has surfaced, interested in channeling resources towards infrastructure, governments and state companies. The profile of the Chinese investment in the region tracks the evolution of China’s economy as it moves toward a higher r ...