Latin America
Countriesregion
The useful literature is about a recurring cycle rather than any one country: commodity windfall, fiscal expansion, overvalued currency, capital flight, default. Dornbusch and Edwards named the pattern and it has held up.
9 books
Start here
- Forgotten ContinentMichael Reid, 2007
- The Other PathHernando de Soto, 1989
- The Economic History of Latin America since IndependenceVictor Bulmer-Thomas, 1994
Books 9
Hernando de Soto · 1989 · Informality as the dominant regional business form, measured rather than asserted.
Victor Bulmer-Thomas · 1994 · The standard economic history; export dependence and import substitution explained.
Rudiger Dornbusch, Sebastian Edwards · 1991 · The four-phase populist cycle; still the best predictive framework for the region.
Sebastian Edwards · 1995 · The World Bank chief economist on the debt crisis and the reforms after it.
Stephen Haber · 1997 · Comparative essays on why Brazil and Mexico diverged from the United States.
Michael Reid · 2007 · The Economist's survey of why the region keeps underperforming.
Sebastian Edwards · 2023 · Chile-focused but the clearest account of the region's liberalisation era and its backlash.
Sebastian Edwards · 2010 · Why growth kept disappointing despite reform; good on institutions and productivity.
Daniel M. Brinks, Steven Levitsky, Maria Victoria Murillo · 2020 · Why written rules go unenforced, and what that means for contracts.