Latin America: The Long and Winding Road to Growth
Federico Foders
Published: June 2001
This paper reviews recent economic reforms carried out in Latin America and
relates them to the long-run economic trends in the region. After a brief overview
of growth and income distribution patterns of Latin American countries in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the paper addresses some of the reasons for
the region’s economic decline. Milestones such as the debt crisis of 1982, the
failure of heterodox stabilisation programmes in the 1980s and the consequences
of liberalisation in the 1990s are discussed at length, as also are the lessons drawn
from the financial crises of the 1990s for the current process of economic
transformation.