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Speeches and Papers
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Miami, Florida
December 2-3, 1998
Speakers and Highlights
Economic reforms in Latin America had made significant progress
during the late 80s and early 90s. Inflation seemed to be
successfully tamed, budget deficits were reduced, and growth
had been steadily recovering from the lost decade of the 80s.
However, more frequently the words "stagnation"
and "backsliding" are now being used to describe
the economies and reform process in Latin America. Can the
reform process be re-ignited? What role can private business
play in re-energizing reforms?
In response to these very questions, CIPE conducted a two-day
conference in Miami, Florida with top regional think tank
experts and business leaders to discuss the private sector’s
reform priorities and to derive new strategies for advancing
reform. The conference focused on the following main objectives:
- Identifying key issues for the next generation of reform;
- Motivating business organizations to re-new their leadership
role in promoting reform, and;
- Developing strategies for the private sector to help sell
reform to policymakers and the general public.
Experts joining the CIPE conference included 1993 Nobel Prize
winner in Economics Douglass North; Sabastian Edwards, Professor
of International Economics at UCLA; Guillermo Perry, Chief
Economist for Latin America at the World Bank; Paul Holden,
Director of the Enterprise Research Institute, and over 30
private sector leaders from the region. Speeches and highlights
of these speakers as well as a survey identifying the business
communities’ priority reforms are available below.
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Sebastian Edwards
Professor of International Economics at the University
of California, Los Angeles and a Research Associate
at the National Bureau of Economic Research, opened
the conference with:
- The conditions necessary for reform;
- Reasons why reform has stagnated in Latin America,
and;
- Suggestions regarding what the private sector can
do to help reinvigorate the reform movement.
Edwards proposed a more modest agenda for reforms and
highlighted success stories from Latin American countries
where reforms have worked best.
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Guillermo E. Perry
Chief Economist at the World Bank for Latin America
and the Caribbean, and Director of the Poverty Reduction
and Economic Management Unit, highlighted:
- What "first-generation" reforms were made
and where;
- How Latin America compares to the rest of the world
in level of development;
- Answers to why now is a good time to promote institutional
reforms, and;
- Reforms needed before "second-generation"
reforms can be implemented.
Perry gave concrete reasons as to why the income gap
within Latin American has grown, what can be done to eliminate
poverty, and just how much growth is needed to overcome
these obstacles.
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Douglass C. North
Co-Recipient of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Science and President of the International Society of
New Institutional Economics at Washington University,
Saint Louis, Missouri, drew from his expertise in the
field of Institutional Economics to illustrate:
- The "bigger picture" of economic change;
- Reasons why past economic reform initiatives have
failed;
- The effects of policy and institutional reform on
economies;
- Changing the "rules of the game;"
- Need for greater market adaptability, and;
- Three main elements for true economic reform.
North focused on role institutions can play in the
reform process and the government’s limitations in
implementing reform.
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Felipe Ortiz de Zevallos
Founder and current Chairman of Grupo Apoyo, a Peruvian
consulting, publishing and polling organization, discussed:
- The results of Apoyo’s survey, which prioritized
the long and short-run reforms sought by the Latin
American private sector, and;
- Insights into which reforms can happen relatively
easily and those reforms that would require constitutional
changes.
de Zevallos’ discussion highlighted the vast differences
in the reform agendas of each Latin American country,
even among those that instituted reforms at approximately
the same time.
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Paul Holden
Director of the Enterprise Research Institute, and
former business owner and consultant to the World Bank
and the Inter-American Development Bank, discussed:
- Reforms needed in the labor, judicial, and educational
systems, and;
- The scope of the "second-generation" reforms.
Holden stressed the necessity of macroeconomic stability
in both the first and second generations of reform, but
emphasized that there must also exist a sufficient institutional
framework capable of supporting those very reforms.
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