[EQ] Growing Pains in Latin America: An Economic Growth Framework as Applied to Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru

Growing Pains in Latin America:
An Economic Growth Framework as Applied to:
Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru

Liliana Rojas-Suarez, Senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, is an expert on financial services and the development impact of global financial flows.
Center for Global Development -  September 2009

Available online at: http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1422848/

Website: http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1422848/

 

“…….Before the global economic crisis began in 2008, all countries in Latin America, long known as the world’s most economically and financially volatile region, had experienced five consecutive years of economic growth, a feat that had not been achieved since the 1970s. Yet despite this growth, Latin America’s incomeper-capita gap relative to high-income countries and other emerging-market economies widened, and poverty remained stubbornly high. Latin America, in short, suffered from growing pains even when things were going reasonably well.

 

What policies could help Latin America avoid these pains and achieve accelerated, sustained growth that reduces poverty and inequality? To find out, CGD senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez convened a task force to identify the foundations of growth in the region.1 Prominent experts in Latin America were then invited to apply this framework to five very different countries by assessing past reform efforts and offering practical suggestions for the future. The task-force framework and the subsequent case studies form the book Growing Pains in Latin America: An Economic Growth Framework as Applied to Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru.

 

An Economic Growth Framework for Latin American

The framework identifies the key foundations for growth in Latin America and provides a mechanism for designing reforms that strengthen these foundations while taking into account the region’s unique characteristics and obstacles to market-based reforms and sustainable growth.

 

The unique features of Latin America

While Latin America shares many features with the rest of the developing world, and countries within Latin America differ significantly among themselves, three features characterize most countries in the region: Latin America is the most financially open, the most democratic, and the most socially unequal of the world’s developing regions……….”

The Book:

Growing Pains in Latin America lays out and applies a region-specific framework for delivering sustainable economic growth.

A task force of experts led by CGD senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez and MIT professor Simon Johnson describes the framework, its (simple) principles, and its flexibility and ability to adapt. Other experts then apply the framework to Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru, providing specific policy recommendations while taking into account the unique conditions of each country.

In an introductory essay, Rojas-Suarez explains and contextualizes the need for a new approach to growth in Latin America. Comprehensive yet flexible, the recommendations in Growing Pains can be applied to all of Latin America and will be valuable to anyone concerned with growth, prosperity, and equality in the region.

Contents

·         Front Matter

·         Chapter 1. Introduction

·         Chapter 2. Helping Reforms Deliver Growth in Latin America: A Framework for Analysis

·         Chapter 3. Pro- and Anti-Market Reforms in Democratic Brazil

·         Chapter 4. Colombia’s Efforts at Achieving Inclusive and Sustainable Growth

·         Chapter 5. Political and Institutional Obstacles to Reform in Costa Rica

·         Chapter 6. How Can Reforms Help Deliver Growth in Mexico?

·         Chapter 7. Helping Reforms Deliver Inclusive Growth in Peru

·         Contributors

·         Index

 

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