Active economic policies by developing countries’ governments to promote growth and industrialization have generally been viewed with suspicion by economists, and for good reasons: past experiences show that such policies have too often failed to achieve their stated objectives. But the...

Latin America’s economic performance is mediocre at best, despite abundant natural resources and flourishing neighbors to the north. The perplexing question of how some of the wealthiest nations in the world in the nineteenth century are now the most crisis-prone has long puzzled economists...

Contents: 1. Introduction / Jan Svejnar and Justin Yifu Lin -- Part I: Recent policies and performance: 2. Path to prosperity: China's transition to market economy in the last four decades / Justin Yifu Lin -- 3. China's performance and prospects in the world economy / Jan Svejnar -- 4. The role...

In this essay, I analyze Salvador Allende's economic policies in Chile during the early 1970s. I argue that the explosion of inflation during his administration (above 1,500% on a six-month annualized measure) was predictable, and that the government's response to it, through massive and strict...