Beyond Reforms: Structural Dynamics and Macroeconomic Vulnerability

Beyond Reforms presents the contributions of some United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) analysts as well as research articles prepared for the Commission. It reviews long-term growth and development patterns and focuses on macroeconomic vulnerability and its social effects. The eight chapters offer theoretical and methodological contributions that share a common focus: how to improve the frustratingly poor economic performance in Latin America, as well as in other parts of the developing world, experienced during the recent phase of economic liberalization. This collection presents a more precise view of the risks and challenges that characterize the new economic era and advances a set of alternative economic policies to manage the open developing-country economies of the early twenty-first century. Ideas that have been absent from the reform agenda over the past two decades are recognized as critical in fostering the improved economic and social performance that liberalization has so far failed to produce. This publication belongs to the Latin American Development Forum Series (LADF), sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the World Bank.