Blog - Center for International Private Enterprise

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Emergency Law in Egypt

President Mubarak's election platform included promises to revoke laws restricting press freedom and judicial independence and to abrogate the 25-year-old state of emergency. Eight months after his re-election, however, municipal elections have been postponed for two years and the government is inv...

Crackdown in Egypt?

Six journalists have been arrested in Cairo in what appears to be a sign that the Mubarak regime is preparing to crackdown on dissent in Egypt after a certain level of tolerance over the last couple of years. The arrests come on the heels of a vote by the Egyptian Parliament for a two-year extension...

Doing Business In Latin America

Check out the new Latin Business Index published by the Latin Business Chronicle. The results are intriguing. If there is one country that embodies the ideal business climate, it is Chile. The country managed to top all but one of the five main categories. It came ahead of Mexico in macro environ...

A Note on the Informal Sector

Protests, initiated by government's expulsion of unlicensed street vendors in a Mexican town, turn violent. Although it seems that kicking out informal vendors from the market was just a spark which ignited some deep-rooted, mostly political tensions, the situation with informal vendors is wor...

The Magic Wand of Nationalization?

President Morales' move to nationalize hydrocarbons in Bolivia has come as a cold shower for many in the international community. However, many of Evo Morales supporters have seen the nationalization of hydrocarbons, in particular natural gas, as the key tool to reduce poverty in the country. The r...

Evo Causes Rift in Latin America’s Liberal Alliance

On Monday, May Day, Bolivia's populist, liberal president Evo Morales announced his plan to nationalize the nation's energy sector. This action was the fulfillment of his electoral pledge to assert control over Bolivia's vast natural gas reserves to help divert money to the nation's impoverished, pr...

Egyptian Parliament delivers major setback to reform

The reform momentum gained in Egypt in the past few years suffered a major setback Sunday as the Egyptian Parliament voted to extend the country's "Emergency Laws," effectively consolidating power for President Hosni Mubarak for another couple of years. No reform measure was more anticipated than ca...

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

One of the common explanations for failures of market reforms in Latin America to deliver in many cases has been the argument that first generation reforms weren’t followed up by the second generation ones. The idea is that the Washington Consensus was not inherently wrong – afterall, ...

Business Against Corruption

The UN Global Compact just released a new publication, featuring case studies of business initiatives aimed at eradicating corrupt behavior. Issues addressed in the publication include: the implications of the UN Convention against Corruption, the correlation between corruption, development and go...

Reducing Poverty: An Incomplete Objective?

Lifting billions of people out of poverty is an unchallenged, conventional wisdom of international development. As the development community works hard to meet the Millennium Development Goals and come up with ways to move the poor into the higher income brackets either through aid or economic ref...

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