This document is the paper-format version of the keynote address delivered by its author on August 2, 2009, to the opening session of the Latin American section (AMILAT) of the 15th World Congress of Jewish Studies, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It attempts to understand the long-term...

"The mistakes the U.S. has made in Latin America-and the high price it will pay for them Washington has long told Latin American countries how to run their economies: bring in multinationals, eliminate the social safety net, keep government debt low, court U.S. politicians, and sign free trade...

This paper adopts a flexible framework to assess both short- and long-run business cycle linkages between six Latin American (LA) countries and the four largest economies in the world (namely the US, the Euro area, Japan and China) over the period 1980:I-2011:IV. The result indicate that within...