The main outcomes of the Plan for Alignment with International Standards, the 2020–2024 strategic plan of the Central Bank of Uruguay (BCU), and the presentation of the ECONUY statistical platform were among the key developments at the 9th Annual Economics Meeting of the Society of Economists of Uruguay (SEU), which was held virtually on Thursday, December 22, 2020, with the support of the Department of Economics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.
At the event, 21 research papers were presented by Uruguayan economists living in Uruguay and around the world. In addition, discussions focused on the impact of COVID-19 on children’s choice of friends and on the integration of minority groups in educational settings.
Roundtable discussion
During the conference, research was presented in both theoretical and empirical fields. In addition, a panel discussion was held in which Gabriela Miraballes—head of the Institutional Sectors Department at the Central Bank of Uruguay (BCU)—and Rafael Xavier—manager at CPA Ferrere—shared updates on data in Uruguay.
Central Bank of Uruguay (BCU)
Gabriela Miraballes shared the key findings of the Plan for Alignment with International Standards (PLAE) developed by the BCU’s Economic Statistics Division.
Among the main changes were the expansion of the statistical base and the updating of the reference and the base.
The expansion of the statistical base includes strengthening the inter-agency framework through agreements, standardizing the financial statements of financial institutions, the public sector, and the non-financial private sector, as well as standardizing statistics on foreign trade in goods and services.
Updating the reference year and base year involves adopting 2012 as the new reference year for both national and international accounts and 2016 as the new base year.
ECONUY
Rafael Xavier presented the ECONUY platform. It is an open-source Python package designed to download and standardize economic statistics, primarily from Uruguay.
“The code that makes it up is public and auditable,” the expert noted. “Today, ECONUY has two versions, each with a clear target audience: the main version, which is the programmatic one, and the graphical version—the one most people are familiar with—which consists of a website where users can view all available datasets in graphical form.”
ECONUY allows users to access, view, and download data. It is a fast and well-organized system that interacts with relational databases and can operate offline.
Keynote sessions
During the 9th Annual Economics Conference of the SEU, two keynote sessions were also held: Parenting, Peers, and the Pandemic, presented by Fabrizzio Zilibotti (Yale University), and Ethnic Mixing in Early Childhood, presented by Yves Zenou (Monash University).
Parenting, Peers, and the Pandemic
Zilibotti’s presentation was based on two academic articles to which he contributed as a co-author: It Takes a Village: The Economics of Parenting with Neighborhood and Peer Effects and When the Great Equalizer Shuts Down: Schools, Peers, and Parents in Pandemic Times.
The expert emphasized that the way children choose which peers to interact with is influenced by the parenting style they were raised with
There are two key factors, the expert said, that play a central role in the process of making friends. On the one hand, there is the “homophily bias,” which refers to the tendency of children to surround themselves with peers who have similar skills or grades. On the other hand, authoritarian parents tend to discourage friendships with children who do not share their children’s skills.
As a result of COVID-19, these factors changed, since school closures meant that students’ social circles were limited to those in their immediate vicinity.
Ethnic Mixing in Early Childhood
During her presentation, Zenou shared the findings from her research for the article Ethnic Mixing in Early Childhood, which he co-authored with other experts.
The article examines the social integration of minority groups in the context of a program carried out in Turkey, which aimed to prepare children (both local and Syrian refugees) for elementary school.
The findings of the study suggested that contact between refugees and locals alone does not guarantee better integration in educational settings.
The expert concluded that programs aimed at integrating refugee children should be designed to incorporate social cohesion, social skills, language skills, and interethnic issues starting at the preschool level.