IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/coecpo/v21y2003i4p476-489.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Political Economy of Growth in Latin America and East Asia: Some Empirical Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Ludovic Comeau

Abstract

This article examines the historical records of poor economic performance of Latin America compared to East Asia's relative success in the 1970s and 1980s. Although both regions adopted similar postwar protective inward‐oriented development strategies, their experiences and economic outcomes diverged significantly in subsequent years. Some have argued that East Asian countries outperformed Latin American ones because they implemented appropriate policies that were adaptive to changes in the global market scene. This study shows that the respective sociopolitical and institutional environment of the two regions was also an important factor contributing to their economic outcomes. A growth model augmented with policy‐driven and sociopolitical variables is developed. Using data for selected countries in both regions, the results confirm the hypothesis of a negative direct (efficiency) effect of sociopolitical instability on growth, with an additional indirect (accumulation) effect through investment, irrespective of a country's location. Policies adopted by governments, particularly to control inflation and foreign indebtedness and to enhance economic freedom and human capital accumulation, appear crucial for stability. Such policies influenced economic performance through both the direct and the indirect channels. (JEL B25, E13, F43, H19, O57)

Suggested Citation

  • Ludovic Comeau, 2003. "The Political Economy of Growth in Latin America and East Asia: Some Empirical Evidence," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 21(4), pages 476-489, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:21:y:2003:i:4:p:476-489
    DOI: 10.1093/cep/byg026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/cep/byg026
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1093/cep/byg026?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Samuel Kyle Jones & Michael Stroup, 2010. "Closed-end country fund premiums and economic freedom," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(21), pages 1639-1649.
    2. repec:nrb:wpaper:nrbwp182013 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Prakash Kumar Shrestha Ph.D., 2013. "A Revisit of the East Asian Development Experiences in the Context of South Asia," NRB Working Paper 18/2013, Nepal Rastra Bank, Research Department.
    4. Murat Ungor, 2017. "Productivity Growth and Labor Reallocation: Latin America versus East Asia," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 24, pages 25-42, March.
    5. Elita Mora & Irene Vicente & Patricia Villegas & Rafael Alvarado, 2017. "Relación entre el capital humano y el producto en Ecuador: el rol de las políticas educativas," Economic Analysis Working Papers (2002-2010). Atlantic Review of Economics (2011-2016), Colexio de Economistas de A Coruña, Spain and Fundación Una Galicia Moderna, vol. 1, pages 1-1, June.
    6. Doucouliagos, Chris & Ulubasoglu, Mehmet Ali, 2006. "Economic freedom and economic growth: Does specification make a difference?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 60-81, March.
    7. Prakash Kumar Shrestha, 2013. "Economic development in South and East Asia: empirical examination of East Asian Development Model," Asia-Pacific Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 20(2), pages 1-28, December.
    8. Zeeshan, Muhammad & han, Jiabin & Rehman, Alam & Ullah, Irfan & Hussain, Arif & Alam Afridi, Fakhr E., 2022. "Exploring symmetric and asymmetric nexus between corruption, political instability, natural resources and economic growth in the context of Pakistan," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    9. Dengjun Zhang, 2022. "Capacity utilization under credit constraints: A firm‐level study of Latin American manufacturing," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 1367-1386, January.
    10. George R. Crowley & John A. Dove & Daniel Sutter, 2017. "Voter Preferences, Institutions, And Economic Freedom," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(1), pages 76-92, January.
    11. Behrooz Gharleghi & Najla Shafighi, 2020. "Do regional trade agreements increase trade? Empirical evidence from the Asia–Pacific region," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 419-435, October.
    12. Awad, Atif & Albaity, Mohamed, 2022. "ICT and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Transmission channels and effects," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8).
    13. Beatriz Barrado & Gregorio Gimenez & Jaime Sanaú, 2021. "The Use of Decomposition Methods to Understand the Economic Growth Gap between Latin America and East Asia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-18, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B25 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian; Stockholm School
    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
    • F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies
    • H19 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Other
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:21:y:2003:i:4:p:476-489. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.