Macroeconomic Populism in Latin America / Rudiger Dornbusch, Sebastian Edwards.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dornbusch, Rudiger.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Edwards, Sebastian.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w2986.

NBER working paper series no. w2986

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1989.

Summary:

Macroeconomic populism is an approach to economics that emphasizes growth and income distribution and deemphasizes the risks of inflation and deficit finance, external constraints and the reaction of economic agents to aggressive non-market policies. The purpose of our paper is to show that policy experiences in different countries and periods share common features, from the initial conditions, the motivation for policies, the argument that the country's conditions are different, to the ultimate collapse. Our purpose in setting out these experiences, those of Chile under Allende and of Peru under Garcia, is not a righteous assertion of conservative economics, but rather a warning that populist policies do ultimately fail; and when they fail it is always at a frightening cost to the very groups who were supposed to be favored. Our central thesis is that the macroeconomics of various experiences is very much the same, even if the politics differed greatly.

Notes:

Print version record

May 1989.