Rice Business - Global Field Experience (GFE) Panama City: Panamanian Business

Women often occupy different roles in a foreign culture. Avoid offensive assumptions and behavior by understanding the position of women in Panamanian society: their legal rights; access to education and health care; workforce participation; and their dating, marriage, and family life.

Abstract: Accelerating economic growth in Central America, Panama and the Dominican Republic (CAPDR) remains an elusive task. While the region performed relatively well in the post-global financial crisis period, over the last five years obstacles to growth have become more evident and new challenges have emerged. In response, the region has strengthened macro-financial frameworks but more progress will be required to pave the way to sustained growth and prosperity. This book considers the structural factors underlying the region's growth outlook and assesses its macroeconomic and financial challenges to help shape the policy agenda going forward. The book first identifies the structural determinants of growth in the region related to: capital formation; employment; demographic factors, including immigration; productivity; and violence. It then highlights the importance of creating fiscal space through the design and implementation of fiscal rules and mechanisms to increase accountability (better quality of public spending, adequate policies to reduce income inequality and sustainable retirement plans). Finally, it presents recent evidence on the importance of a supportive financial sector for growth (including through financial inclusion and development).

Deep trade agreements are reciprocal agreements between countries that seek integration of goods, services, and factors' markets, or deep integration. Drawing on new data and evidence, Deep Trade Agreements: Anchoring Global Value Chains in Latin America and the Caribbean shows that these agreements can drive policy reforms that can help the region overcome some of its disadvantageous fundamentals. Four areas of deep integration--trade facilitation, regulatory cooperation, services, and state support--are priorities to improve the participation of countries in the region in GVC:1. Facilitating trade can reduce border delays and ease the challenges caused by the remoteness of some countries.2. Improving regulatory cooperation can help create larger regional markets by reducing the costs of nontariff measures.3. Opening the service economy can compensate for factor endowment scarcity and facilitate access to skills and technology.4. Fostering competition and regulating state support and state-owned enterprises can improve the quality of economic institutions.