Latin America since the 1990s: Rising from the Sickbed?

摘要

The economic performance of Latin America was disastrous in the 1980s In what is often called the "lost decade," the region's economy was disrupted by an international debt crisis and raging inflation Per capita GDP declined at an average annual rateof 0.6 percent in the 1980s. Toward the end of the 1980s, the frustration with the performance led to a search for sound macro and structural policies. Thus, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many countries in Latin America were receptive to a package of economic reforms that was dubbed the "Washington Consensus" (Williamson, 1990). The precise reforms varied from country to country, but in general they included some combination of fiscal and monetary tightness, greater openness to foreign trade (if not necessarily to foreign capital), privatization and deregulation. Yet the early 2000s have seen a disappointing economic performance in Latin America; for example, per capita GDP for the region contracted by 2.5 percent in 2002.