Previo a la reciente creación del Sistema Integrado Previsional Argentino (SIPA), la Reforma del Sistema Previsional en 2007 representó el primer cambio significativo desde el año 1994. Por primera vez los trabajadores cuyas contribuciones se dirigían al régimen privado de capitalización, pudieron libremente optar por pasarse al régimen de público de reparto.

This document attempts to measure the global penetration of peripheral realism, a theory of international relations coined in Argentina during the 1980s and 90s. It includes a list of doccuments from several different countries in which the words “peripheral realism” are included in titles or subtitles.

One important cultural factor that has contributed to inhibiting regional cooperation and integration in Latin America lies in the intense territorial nationalism prevailing in some of its Spanish-speaking countries. This frequently understated phenomenon is an outgrowth of the territorial disputes inherited from Colonial times, and of the indoctrination of public opinion through the educational system and the mass media. Indeed, nearly all of the Spanish-speaking countries of South America harbor myths of territorial losses.

This paper presents evidence of electoraly-motivated changes in the budget balance, public expenditures, composition of public expenditures and provincial revenues in Argentine provinces. The empirical study is made using panel data analysis for 22 provinces during the period 1985-2001. Unconditional results show that conditioning on the alignment of provincial and federal executives (same political party in power) there is evidence of systematic changes in fiscal policies around elections. The observed changes support the predictions of rational opportunistic models of PBC.

A governance indicator for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) is presented. The indicator adopts stakeholder theory in selecting its elements, which also include a few general governance principles as well as board features. The paper reviews main governance indicators treated in the literature, which are mostly applied to publicly traded firms. It then proposes a specific indicator for SMEs which, in general, are private.

La Chisso Corporation tiene su planta más famosa en Minamata, una ciudad costera de la prefectura de Kumamoto, en la isla de Kyushu, Japón sudoccidental. Chisso y enfermedad de Minamata son nombres indisolublemente unidos, ya que esta empresa fue responsable de la irrupción de la enfermedad, un mal neurológico provocado por el envenenamiento con mercurio. En este trabajo presentamos la relación entre Chisso y la enfermedad de Minamata, como escenario para la identificación de varios problemas vinculados con la ética de los negocios y, en menor medida, con la ética personal y social.

This paper sets forth a pair of distinctive contributions to the subject. In the first place, it provides a unified approach to capital investment decisions, by means of a two-tiered framework of analysis. Such approach consists in working out the net present value of the project by discounting its cash flows with a temporal structure of rates of return adjusted for country and credit risk; this procedure accounts for the first tier. It is for the second tier to bring about both the internal and external rates of return.

Los modelos económicos que analizan el crecimiento hacen un fuerte hincapié en el efecto positivo de la acumulación del capital sobre el desarrollo de las economías. Para ello, deben existir mercados de capitales desarrollados que canalicen adecuadamente los ahorros hacia la inversión. Los enfoques de análisis del crecimiento económico más recientes incorporan en su desarrollo aspectos institucionales y de infraestructura de incentivos a través de la normativa vigente, relevantes para explicar el desarrollo de los mercados, la acumulación del capital y -por extensión- el crecimiento.

El presente trabajo desarrolla una metodología de estimación de sistemas de demanda, que sirve para calcular la elasticidad crítica a utilizar en la definición de mercados relevantes dentro de un sector en particular, y para simular los efectos unilaterales de fusiones horizontales que puedan producirse entre empresas que operan en dicho sector. Todo el método se basa en la utilización de las distintas elasticidades de largo plazo estimadas, y es esencialmente el mismo para definir los mercados y para simular las fusiones.

Political budget cycles (PBCs) result from the credibility problems that office-motivated incumbents face under asymmetric information, due to their temptation to manipulate fiscal policy to increase their electoral chances. We analyze the role of rules that limit debt, crucial for aggregate PBCs to take place. Since the budget process under separation of powers typically requires that the legislature authorize new debt, divided government can make these fiscal rules credible. Commitment is undermined either by unified government or by imperfect compliance with the budget law.