The Latin America and Caribbean Centre has led the partnership between The Inter-American Development Bank Group (IDB Group) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) following an agreement signed between LSE and IDB in October 2017.
The IDB Group is a leading source of long-term financing for economic, social and institutional projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to loans, grants and guarantees, the IDB conducts cutting-edge research to offer innovative and sustainable solutions to the region’s most pressing challenges. Founded in 1959 to help accelerate progress in its developing member countries, the IDB continues to work every day to improve lives.
The partnership represents a commitment to pursue collaboration in research, knowledge exchange and dissemination to expand the reach and impact of knowledge products, knowledge transfer and thought leadership related to the advancement of the Latin America and Caribbean region.
LACC-IDB Conferences
The partnership was formally announced on 4 October 2017 at the first LSE-IDB conference entitled “Skills for Development in a Changing World,” which was opened by LSE Director, Dame Minouche Shafik. The event, inspired by the IDB’s flagship publication “Learning Better: Public Policy for Skills Development”, explored the obstacles and opportunities related to the region’s skills gap, and discussed the future of skills in the region, the gender divisions of labour, and the implications of a new “skills economy”.
LACC hosted two events on 1 November 2018 as outcomes of the partnership: The first, a conference entitled “Better Spending for Better Lives” was prompted by the release of the IDB 2018 Flagship report, “Better Spending for Better Lives: how Latin America and the Caribbean Can do more with Less”. The conference addressed how governments can do more with less. It examined the consequences of an increase in the role and size of government around the world in recent decades, with public spending to gross domestic product growing steadily during the commodity price boom of the 2000s. With dwindling resources governments are now faced with a dilemma, how to “keep economies growing and their citizens happy in a fiscally sustainable manner”.
The conference was followed by an evening public debate, “Doing More with Less: Efficient Spending for Better Lives” that addressed the Latin American and the Caribbean context of allocating public expenditure without short-changing the future. Analysis of government spending in the region reveals widespread waste and inefficiencies that could be as large as 4.4 percent of the region’s GDP, showing there is ample room to improve basic services without necessarily spending more resources.
LACC-IDB Postgraduate Essay Prize
In 2017 and 2018, IDB and LACC partnered in a Postgraduate Essay Prize for a paper dealing with development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Nicolás Oviedo Dávila received the prize in 2017 for his research on transport accessibility and its relationship with labour informality in the city of Bogotá. His submission was published on the LACC blog: Routes to formality: transport accessibility, skills, and labour markets in Bogotá.
In 2018 the prize was awarded to Ana Irys De Menezes Silva for her essay, Climatic and non-climatic determinants of vector-borne diseases under climate change scenarios: projections for Dengue Fever incidence in Brazil. Her insights were published on the LACC blog: Climate change will intensify the spread of dengue fever in Brazil and beyond, and the poor will be worst hit (also accessible in Portuguese).
IDB Blog Contributions
The LACC blog has frequently featured IDB contributors. For example, on 2 October 2017, the blog "Combating inequalities amongst children and the active workforce can boost skills and productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean" was published by Mattias Busso, Julian Cristia, Diana Hincapié, Julián Messina and Laura Ripani of the IDB Group. IDB’s Chief Economist Alejandro Izquierdo also contributed the blog “Latin America and the Caribbean needs to do more with less and set its sights on the future” in preparation for the 2018 IDB conferences hosted by LACC.