Regional competitiveness: Latin America and the Caribbean

Lourdes Gabriela Daza Aramayo, Marek Vokoun and Milan Damborsky ()

ERSA conference papers from European Regional Science Association

Abstract: Regional Competitiveness can be defined as the region's potential in the long run enforce economically in competition with other regions while maintaining social cohesion and environmental sustainability. This ability is determined by many factors, such as innovation, technological progress, investment attractiveness, skills of the labor force, transportation infrastructure and quality of transport services, public sector efficiency and public security. These factors influence the resulting economic, social and environmental situation of the region. The authors have compared the competitiveness of Latin America and the Caribbean states. Indicators of GDP, unemployment rate, share of high-educated employees, the rate of migration, income, population, unemployment, delinquency, CO2 emissions were used for the evaluation. For the purposes of interpretation and due to imperfect data bases, small countries to 3 million are earmarked specifically together with the island states in the Antile states. Among the countries over 3 million inhabitants (the area of South America and Mexico) Mexico dominates, followed by Chile and Argentina. On the contrary, as the least competitive Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay were evaluated. Mexico's dominance is mainly due to its position in the economic dimension. Mexico and Chile, by contrast, are better in environmental terms. The specific situation is in Bolivia, which reaches above the average in the social field (e.g. in the tertiary education) but lags in the economic sphere. Among the countries over 3 million inhabitants (the area of Central America) Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras show the best results. These countries have significant differences, and compared to countries located in the index below clearly have higher scores in the social field. Among the countries under 3 million inhabitants has the best positions St. Kitts and Nevis, followed by Cuba and the Bahamas. The problematic acquisition and data validation must be mentioned in the context of evaluation of these countries. The authors focused on selected factors of competitiveness rated best and worst of Latin American countries in the next section analysis. In this context, authors considered the economic liberalization, the role of technology in the economy, the position in international trade, education system, labor market and healthcare conditions, environment and transport infrastructure.

Date: 2012-10
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