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This study researched how corruption affects the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI). With the help of a qualitative methodology, the results of the analysis show that firms headquartered in countries where corruption is high have an advantage when operating in a foreign country with a similar institutional environment. The reason for this advantage is that such firms may possess knowledge of how to cope with the arbitrary and pervasive dimensions of corruption at home. On the other hand, firms from countries with lower corruption levels than the host country are more affected by corruption in a highly corrupt host country. Finally, even though this study found evidence that all firms operating in a highly corrupt country might participate in corrupt deals, those headquartered in highly corrupt countries are more willing to do so. This claim is based on the fact that firms from less corrupt countries might face stronger pressures from their headquarters to not engage in corrupt deals, whereas firms from more corrupt countries might not encounter such pressures.

This chapter has four parts. The first section addresses the legal analysis of the Argentine local governments' autonomous regime, considering its provinces and municipalities, and the second section analyzes the portfolio of policies – nationals, provincials, locals – to attend the emergency of COVID-19, which show that the Federal State was dedicated to the overall strategy: sustaining the income of citizens, businesses, and subnational governments; and the purchase and distribution of health equipment and supplies, while the attention of COVID-19 cases fell to the provinces and municipalities. The third section analyzes the coordination mechanisms during the pandemic mainly based more on presidential leadership with the support of governors and mayors than on institutional mechanisms. Finally, the role of the political agency especially as for the main interjurisdictional conflicts that took place in 2020 and 2021 once the authorities dimensioned the pandemic scope as well as the Kirchnerism/anti-Kirchnerism cleavage that characterizes Argentine politics since 2008.

This chapter is designed with the aim to determine the influence of sociodemographic variables on the capacity to generate social enterprises, such as sex, the student’s country, if only they study or if they study and work, as well as if they participate or direct a social enterprise in university students of Latin American business schools. This research adopted an inductive quantitative approach using a questionnaire. The participants were university students of business schools from Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Second-generation structural equation method (SEM-PLS) was used to analyse the results, using the SmartPLS 3.2.7 software applied to data on 3,739 university students. The results suggest that the entrepreneur role, labour situation, country and sex have a moderating effect in the relation between entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial intention. Also, by using resampling technique Bootstrapping (5,000 times,p < 0.01), significance of the trajectory coefficients (beta) and effect size of the coefficients (beta) were measured to demonstrate significance. Finally, with this research the authors ascertain that entrepreneurial orientation positively influences entrepreneurial intention. thus explaining 42.4% of its variance. This chapter is the first attempt on investigating in university students of Latin American business schools about factors of entrepreneurship orientation and entrepreneurship intention, and has strong potential to contribute to development of policies and strategies to promote the growth of entrepreneurship activities in the universities.

François Perroux was an economist of strong convictions and fruitful ideas. His belief, which was also shared by other eminent development economists of his time, that backwardness was not a fate is entirely reflected in his development pole theory, which has a prominent place within the regional development theory. This implies that his theory was highly influential, as evidenced by the fact that strategies based on development poles were implemented around the world, in both developed and developing countries. Although these strategies took different forms, largely depending on the specific contexts in which they were applied, there was a common factor in all of them, which was the importance of the direct use of large-scale investment resources to generate the hoped-for structural changes through accelerated economic growth. Looking carefully at the Italian and Brazilian cases, it should be noted that the development pole strategies had, in addition to the use of heavy investment resources already mentioned, some common characteristics, such as: the focus of attention directed toward the backward regions, specifically the Mezzogiorno region in Italy and the Amazon region in Brazil; the fight against regional disparities within both countries through structural change and the strengthening of backward regional economies as an underlying reason; and the active participation of the State in the drawing up and implementation processes of development poles. This chapter aims at comparing the development pole strategies in Italy and Brazil, highlighting similarities and differences of these experiences in triggering the long-awaited regional development.

Following a successful debt-renegotiation process in the mid-2000s, Argentina consolidated a path of growth and debt relief. The outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2007–2009 and other domestic imbalances altered the economic scenario. In this context, the authorities tried to return to global financial markets, but legal conflict with vulture funds made that option unpalatable. In 2015, the triumph of a right-wing political coalition restored the dominance of neoliberal economic policies, including the return to debt and equity markets. The subsequent cycle of indebtedness and capital flight faced by Argentina not only unleashed a major crisis but also caused the return of the International Monetary Fund, which granted the largest lending arrangement to a single country in its history. The aims of this chapter are to analyze the winding cycle of debt reduction and overindebtedness experienced by Argentina between 2001 and 2022; to examine the set of structural factors as well as the role of certain domestic and foreign actors; and to consider the long-term effects of external indebtedness and some lessons that can be drawn for other countries in the Global South.

Unemployment insurance (UI) reduces the opportunity cost of leisure, but it is unknown whether this additional leisure time is physically active. To obtain unbiased estimates of the effect of UI on physically active leisure participation, I exploit changes in UI program legislation across US states and time. Using nationally representative monthly data between 2003 and 2010 from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), I find evidence that both state UI eligibility expansions and increases in maximum allowable state UI benefits coincide with greater probability of physical activity among the recently unemployed. Based on point estimates, state UI eligibility expansions increased the probability of physical activity participation by 8–10 percentage points among the unemployed with less than a high school education, while a 10% increase in the maximum allowable state UI benefit increased the probability of physical activity by 0.3 to 0.6 percentage points among the unemployed who have completed high school or some college.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

While in some districts having drinking water is a given reality, there are others where there is a lack of access to this resource. Unfortunately, even today, 10.2% of the world population lives this situation and it could be worse in the coming years, according to UNICEF. Inhabitants in Pamplona Alta at southern Lima, Peru, daily suffer this harsh reality. This social challenge study attempts to define a methodology for an effective logistic planning of water distribution in Torres Minas. Currently, they obtain it from unsanitary and informal vendors. This chapter provides the basis of a new layout of the water distribution network based on clusters to efficiently satisfy water demand. Specifically, we propose the use of orderly delivery points called “bus-stops of water” in a two-echelon distribution system, whose optimization relies on a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) technique. The objective of these guidelines is minimizing the transactional and transportation cost, while increasing the bargaining power of the community. Results showed a reduction of 52.67% and 26% in transactional and transportation costs, respectively, and a reduction of the associated risks of shortage and contamination of a tight delivery of water. Moreover, we foster the application of this methodology in other similar situations to produce sustainable growth for human settlements; regardless, there is a lack of access to water or a steep geography.