Reform, Recovery, and Growth: Latin America and the Middle East

The debt crisis of 1982 caused serious dislocations in most developing countries. Reform, Recovery, and Growth seeks to explain why some of these countries have succeeded in engineering a recovery from the debt crisis, while others continue to stagnate more than a decade later. Included in this volume are case studies that describe in detail the stabilization experiences in Brazil, Israel, Argentina, and Bolivia, as well as discussions of Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Turkey. Among the questions addressed are: What are the requirements for a stabilization policy that reduces inflation in a reasonable amount of time at an acceptable cost? What are the effects of structural reforms, especially trade liberalization, deregulation, and privatization, on growth in the short and long runs? How do macroeconomic instability and adjustment policies affect income distribution and poverty? How does the specific design of structural adjustment efforts affect results? In this continuation of the research published in Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America, the authors confirm that macroeconomic stability has a positive effect on income distribution and therefore benefits the poor.