Economic Development in Latin America

This course aims at familiarizing students with historical and contemporary debates on Latin American economic development and its social effects. The focus of the course is comparative in perspective. Most of the readings deal, therefore, with Latin America as a region, not with individual countries. The first five classes are historical. After an initial overview of long-term historical trends and debates on institutional development in Latin America, it looks at the four distinctive periods of economic development: the “lost decades” after Independence, the export age from the late nineteenth century to 1929, the era of State-led industrialization, and the recent period of market reforms. The latter should be viewed as an introduction to the second part, which deals with the major contemporary issues: macroeconomic management, trade policies, production sector trends and policies, income distribution and social policy. The course will end with a session on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on Latin America and the ongoing debate on it future economic and social development.