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dc.titleCrossroads in a Fog: Navigating Latin America's Development Challenges with Text Analytics
dc.contributor.authorAvellán, Leopoldo
dc.contributor.authorBrito, Steve
dc.contributor.orgunitOffice of Strategic Planning and Development Effectiveness
dc.contributor.orgunitCountry Department Central America, Haiti, Mexico, Panama and the Dominican Republic
dc.coverageLatin America and the Caribbean
dc.date.available2023-12-22T00:12:00
dc.date.issue2023-12-22T00:12:00
dc.description.abstractLatin America and the Caribbean are facing challenging times due to a combination of worsening development gaps and limited fiscal space to address them. Furthermore, the region is contending with an unfavorable external environment. Issues such as rising poverty, climate change, inadequate infrastructure, and low-quality education and health services, among others, require immediate attention. Deciding how to prioritize efforts to address these development gaps is challenging due to their complexity and urgency, and setting priorities becomes even more difficult when resources are limited. Therefore, it is crucial to have tools that help policymakers prioritize current development challenges to guide the allocation of financial support from international financial institutions and other development partners. This paper contributes to this discussion by using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify the most critical development areas. It applies these techniques to detailed periodic country analysis reports (Country Development Challenges, CDCs) prepared by country economists at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) from 2015 to 2021. The study reveals that despite the perception that new development challenges have become more critical lately, the region continues to struggle with the same challenges from the past, particularly those related to the government's institutional capacity, fiscal policy, education, productivity and firms, infrastructure, and poverty.
dc.format.extent33
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0005489
dc.identifier.urlhttps://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Crossroads-in-a-Fog-Navigating-Latin-Americas-Development-Challenges-with-Text-Analytics.pdf
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherInter-American Development Bank
dc.subjectEconomic Development
dc.subjectText Mining
dc.subjectGrowth Diagnosis
dc.subjectEducation
dc.subjectClimate Change
dc.subjectSustainable Growth
dc.subjectFiscal Policy
dc.subjectPoverty
dc.subjectInstitutional Capacity
dc.subjectInfrastructure Development
dc.subject.jelcodeD83 - Search • Learning • Information and Knowledge • Communication • Belief • Unawareness
dc.subject.jelcodeF53 - International Agreements and Observance • International Organizations
dc.subject.jelcodeO19 - International Linkages to Development • Role of International Organizations
dc.subject.jelcodeO54 - Latin America • Caribbean
dc.subject.jelcodeZ13 - Economic Sociology • Economic Anthropology • Social and Economic Stratification
dc.subject.keywordsDevelopment Challenges;Text Analytics;Natural Language Processing;Latin American and the Caribbean
dc.typeTechnical Notes
idb.identifier.pubnumberIDB-TN-02679
idb.operationBK-C2031
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