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, we consider 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 last topic should be viewed as an introduction to the second part of the course, which deals with 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 recent crises on Latin America (Covid-19 and the 2022-23 world crisis), and the ongoing debate on the region’s future economic and social development.