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"This volume aims to illustrate the uniqueness of the economies of the countries and territories of the Caribbean as well as the similarities they share with other regions. While most countries in the region share many of the characteristics of middle-income countries, theirs is a matter of extremes. Their generally small size suggests a fragility not found elsewhere. While much of the world is beginning to feel some effects of climate change, the Caribbean is ground zero. These factors suggest a difficult road ahead, but the chapters presented in this volume aim to help spur the search for creative solutions to the region's problems. The chapters, written by expert contributors, examine the Caribbean economies from several perspectives. Many break new ground in questioning past policy mindsets, while developing new approaches to many of the traditional constraints limiting growth in the region. The volume is organized in four sections. Part I examines commonalities, including issues surrounding small economies, tourism, climate change and energy security. Part II looks at obstacles to sustained progress, for example debt, natural disasters and crime. In Part III chapters consider the specific role of external influences, including the USA and the European Union, China, as well as regional co-operation. The volume concludes in Part IV with country case studies intended to provide a sense of the diversity that runs through the region"--

Caribbean Area --- Economic conditions

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Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) does not have the infrastructure it needs, or deserves, given its income. Many argue that the solution is to spend more; by contrast, this report has one main message: Latin America can dramatically narrow its infrastructure service gap by spending efficiently on the right things. This report asks three questions: what should LAC countries' goals be? How can these goals be achieved as cost-effectively as possible? And who should pay to reach these goals? In doing so, we drop the 'infrastructure gap' notion, favoring an approach built on identifying the 'service gap'. Benchmarking Latin America in this way reveals clear strengths and weaknesses. Access to water and electricity is good, with the potential for the region's electricity sector to drive competitive advantage; by contrast, transport and sanitation should be key focus areas for further development. The report also identifies and analyses some of the emerging challenges for the region-climate change, increased demand and urbanization-that will put increasing pressure on infrastructure and policy makers alike. Improving the region's infrastructure performance in the context of tight fiscal space will require spending better on well identified priorities. Unlike most infrastructure diagnostics, this report argues that much of what is needed lies outside the infrastructure sector - in the form of broader government issues-from competition policy, to budgeting rules that no longer solely focus on controlling cash expenditures. We also find that traditional recommendations continue to apply regarding independent, well-performing regulators and better corporate governance, and highlight the critical importance of cost recovery where feasible and desirable, as the basis for future commercial finance of infrastructure services. Latin America has the means and potential to do better; and it can do so by spending more efficiently on the right things.

Infrastructure (Economics) --- Caribbean Area. --- Latin America.

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"The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region has untapped potential for trade and global value chains (GVCs) to grow in the wake of COVID-19. The gap between potential and actual GVC integration reflects LAC economic fundamentals such as geography, market size, institutions, and factor endowments. But policy choices matter as well. This report, based on new data and evidence, shows that 'deep' trade agreements can drive policy reforms and help the region overcome some of its disadvantageous fundamentals. Four priority areas of deep integration--trade facilitation, regulatory cooperation, services, and state support--can improve the GVC participation of LAC countries: (i) Trade facilitation can reduce border delays and ease problems stemming from the remoteness of LAC countries. (ii) Regulatory cooperation can help LAC countries access larger markets by reducing the costs of nontariff measures. (iii) Opening the service economy can compensate for factor endowment scarcity, facilitating access to skills and technology. (iv) Regulating competition and state support to state-owned enterprises can improve the quality of economic institutions. These reforms are all the more important as global trade tensions persist and economies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. In these times of uncertainty and upheaval, policy commitments to deep trade agreements can create a more stable institutional environment for promoting the ability of LAC countries to integrate into global value chains"--

Economic-history. --- Foreign trade promotion --- Caribbean Area --- Economic conditions.

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While adoption of new technologies is understood to enhance long-term growth and average per-capita incomes, its impact on lower-skilled workers is more complex and merits clarification. Concerns abound that advanced technologies developed in high-income countries would inexorably lead to job losses of lower-skilled, less well-off workers and exacerbate inequality. Conversely, there are countervailing concerns that policies intended to protect jobs from technology advancement would themselves stultify progress and depress productivity. This book squarely addresses both sets of concerns with new research showing that adoption of digital technologies offers a pathway to more inclusive growth by increasing adopting firms' outputs, with the jobs-enhancing impact of technology adoption assisted by growth-enhancing policies that foster sizable output expansion. The research reported here demonstrates with economic theory and data from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico that lower-skilled workers can benefit from adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies biased towards skilled workers, and often do. The inclusive jobs outcomes arise when the effects of increased productivity and expanding output overcome the substitution of workers for technology. While the substitution effect replaces some lower-skilled workers with new technology and more highly-skilled labor, the output effect can lead to an increase in the total number of jobs for less-skilled workers. Critically, output can increase sufficiently to increase jobs across all tasks and skill types within adopting firms, including jobs for lower-skilled workers, as long as lower-skilled task content remains complementary to new technologies and related occupations are not completely automated and replaced by machines. It is this channel for inclusive growth that underlies the power of pro-competitive enabling policies and institutions-such as regulations encouraging firms to compete and policies supporting the development of skills that technology augments rather than replaces-to ensure that the positive impact of technology adoption on productivity and lower-skilled workers is realized.

Technological innovations --- Labor market --- Economic aspects. --- Caribbean Area. --- Latin America.

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"This book provides an in-depth analysis of the role of regional integration in the contemporary Caribbean, challenging the value of the neoliberal ideology that permeates regionalism discourse. The book asks what value neoliberal regionalism holds for the Caribbean, when its economic goals of efficiency and competitiveness serve to actively marginalize small states within the global community. Presenting an alternative framework for assessing success, the book investigates how the Caribbean community (CARICOM) can confront new challenges and perform a more developmental function, centring economic transformation and a more democratic process. The book also explores long-standing challenges with implementing regional decisions at the national level and the absence of avenues for citizens to influence the direction of the integration movement. It explores these themes against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the climate crisis which underscore the fragility of Caribbean economies, their high levels of indebtedness, weak social security systems, and their marginality, Bringing together decades of research from one of the world's foremost scholars on the subject, this book will be essential reading for researchers of the Caribbean specifically, and for those with an interest in regionalism more generally, across the fields of political economy, international relations, history, geography, economics and global development"--

Caribbean Community. --- Caribbean Area --- Economic conditions. --- Economic integration. --- Commerce.