This paper outlines the elements of the colonial heritage which led to divergences in both economics and politics between North and Latin America; the inflence of natural resource abundance on the politics and economics of the region and the reasons for the continent wide reforms and the...

This paper updates ECLAC's indexes of structural reform in five areas: trade reform, financial liberalization, tax reform, liberalization of external capital transactions and privatization. 17 Latin American countries are covered for the period 1970-2000. The resulting indexes facilitate...

The wave of structural reforms in Latin America and elsewhere has stimulated the development of a wide body of theoretical literature on the political economy of reform, i. e. , the study of the political constraints that condition the timing, speed and sequencing of reforms. This paper tests...

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s Latin America experienced a profound economic revolution as import restrictions were lifted, financial markets liberalized and numerous state enterprises privatized. The economic effects of these types of structural reforms are widely thought to be positive,...

After more than a decade of pro-market reform in Latin America, symptoms of fatigue are evident among all the major players: public opinion polls show that most individuals think the reforms have not been beneficial, policymakers seem to have lost their reform zeal, and neither opinion leaders...