The main objective of the group is to study the behavior of the Uruguayan economy from a macroeconomic perspective, seeking a greater understanding of the structural relationships between macroeconomic variables both in the short and long-term.
This involves carrying out systematic evaluations of the Uruguayan economy, identifying the determinants of its current situation and forecasting its short-run evolution. This requires maintaining a database of the country’s relevant statistical information, processing this data, constructing and updating indicators and prediction models, as well as publishing brief reports on topics relevant to the current economic situation.
In addition, in order to support and reinforce the short-term evaluations, we carry out medium and long-term analyses, focusing on the determinants of Uruguayan economic growth, the labor market and foreign trade and competitiveness.
This article analyses unemployment dynamics in Uruguay within the framework of chain reaction theory and offers evidence to account for the remarkable drop in unemployment over recent years. It confirms the impact of exogenous variables on the long-run trajectory of unemployment and rules out the notion that its long-run level gravitates around an equilibrium value. It identifies inertia processes in labour supply and demand and in wages, whose mutual interactions mean that shocks have persistent effects on unemployment. There are also complementary spillover effects that influence the magnitude and duration of the effects of shocks. Lastly, the article emphasizes that growth in the capital stock and capital productivity accounts for some of the substantial decline in unemployment in Uruguay since 2003.
En el presente estudio se analiza la política económica llevada adelante en Uruguay entre 2000 y 2014. En estos quince años analizados Uruguay logró atravesar una de las mayores crisis económicas de su historia y luego aprovechar un escenario internacional favorable para realizar reformas estructurales de significación y mejorar sus indicadores sociales. En el proceso parece haber logrado una mayor independencia de la región, obteniendo buenos resultados incluso en años en que los países vecinos atravesaban desequilibrios macroeconómicos y estancamiento de sus economías. No obstante, los años venideros demostrarán si con un escenario internacional menos favorable y ante la persistencia de un mal desempeño de los países vecinos, este “desacople” es posible.
Este estudio realiza estimaciones de la elasticidad de largo plazo de la demanda de trabajo en Uruguay (1986-2005). Se utilizó para ello el análisis de cointegración de Johansen y la modelización mediante mecanismo de corrección de error. Se encontró que la demanda de trabajo agregada es relativamente inelástica respecto al costo laboral y algo más elástica considerando sólo al trabajo dependiente privado. Es aproximadamente igual a la unidad respecto al producto en el sector privado y no se descarta que la elasticidad respecto al capital sea de igual magnitud pero de signo contrario que la del costo laboral
This paper examines the evolution of price competitiveness of Uruguayan economy, assessing the presence of "Balassa-Samuelson Effect" and a change in the economy’s international integration, in a context of income and aggregate expenditure growth, through Johansen methodology. We found a long-term relationship between RER, the differential in labor productivity between Uruguay and U.S., extra-regional exports and total consumption. Furthermore, we found that the elasticities of RER to its long-term fundamentals are in line with the theory. We conclude that the decline in the equilibrium real exchange rate in the last two decades is due to the movement of its fundamentals.
This paper analyses the determinants of Uruguayan manufactured exports without agricultural inputs to Argentina and Brazil (where they are principally destined).