Crisis in Latin America: infrastructure investment, employment and the expectations of stimulus

Jordan Z. Schwartz, Luis Andres and Georgeta Dragoiu

No 5009, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Infrastructure investment is a central part of the stimulus plans of the Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) region as it confronts the growing financial crisis. This paper estimates the potential effects on direct, indirect, and induced employment for different types of infrastructure projects with LAC-specific variables. The analysis finds that the direct and indirect short-term employment generation potential of infrastructure capital investment projects may be considerable - averaging around 40,000 annual jobs per US$1billion in LAC, depending upon such variables as the mix of subsectors in the investment program; the technologies deployed; local wages for skilled and unskilled labor; and the degrees of leakages to imported inputs. While these numbers do not account for substitution effect, they are built around an assumed"basket"of investments that crosses infrastructure sectors most of which are not employment-maximizing. Albeit limited in scope, rural road maintenance projects may employ 200,000 to 500,000 annualized direct jobs for every US$1billion spent. The paper also describes the potential risks to effective infrastructure investment in an environment of crisis including sorting and planning contradictions, delayed implementation and impact, affordability, and corruption.

Keywords: Transport Economics Policy&Planning; Banks&Banking Reform; Non Bank Financial Institutions; Debt Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-lam and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/WPS5009.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().