Why Latin American Nations Fail

Matías Vernengo is Professor of Economics at Bucknell University. He previously taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Kalamazoo College, and the University of Utah. He was Senior Research Manager at the Central Bank of Argentina and external consultant to several United Nations organizations.

"Drawing on a range of exciting economists like Kaldor, Kalecki, and Prebisch, this volume constitutes a refreshing alternative to Why Nations Fail and provides a rich policy and research agenda for Latin America. Economic development does not depend on property rights but on building effective states and managing aggregate demand over the long run."--Diego Sánchez-Ancochea, coauthor of The Quest for Universal Social Policy in the South: Actors, Ideas, and Architectures "Rooted in CEPAL's path-breaking structuralist theoretical and empirical interpretation of the retarding socioeconomic impacts of commodity-based export-led economies, this cutting-edge book constitutes a legitimate (and much-needed) challenge to the near-hegemony of entropic national economic strategies grounded in the decontextualized, pseudo-historical, 'new institutionalist' interpretations of Latin America's circuitous economic trajectory."--James M. Cypher, Professor of Economics, Doctoral Program in Development Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, México