CAMBRIDGE – It has been a while since a debate among academic economists attracted so much interest from the mainstream press as has the row…

SANTIAGO – Barely two years ago, Brazil’s rapid economic growth and expanding middle class made it the darling of financial markets, whereas…

SANTIAGO – The participants came, European guests were greeted, speeches were delivered, toasts made, and, in the end, the annual meeting of…

SANTIAGO – Is inflation targeting – the rule that most of the world’s major central banks (though not the United States Federal Reserve) use…

SANTIAGO – Europe has long been menaced by the threat of two crises. The first would erupt with a successful speculative attack on a large e…

SANTIAGO – Brazil needs to grow more. That is what the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, keeps telling Brazilians. With the economy nearl…

SANTIAGO – Chile today produces one-third of the world’s lithium – used in batteries that power everything from computers to cars – and has …

SANTIAGO – Margaret Thatcher famously once said that “there is no such thing as society.” Today, the people of Chile are showing just how wr…

SANTIAGO – Excitement, anxious young faces, the sense of a nation’s best and brightest coming together for a noble cause: the scene was an o…

SANTIAGO – For once, Mexico is in the news for something good: an election. What a contrast to the usual coverage by international news agen…

SANTIAGO – Policymakers in Europe seem to be surprised at the ongoing bank run in Greece (and the nascent run in Spain). They should not be.…

SANTIAGO – The only thing worse than a terrible movie is a terrible movie that we have already seen. By nationalizing oil giant YPF, Argenti…

SANTIAGO – The guardians of austerity in Europe are striking back. Their emerging narrative goes like this:When some economists spoke of pan…

SANTIAGO – During a visit to Rio de Janeiro last year, US President Barack Obama told a cheering crowd that Brazil is the country of the fut…

SANTIAGO – First, there was one disappointed foreign entrepreneur. In December, Israeli venture capitalist Arnon Kohavi, whose firm had been…

SANTIAGO – On matters of sex, the citizens of mostly Roman Catholic Latin America often proclaim one thing and practice something very diffe…

SANTIAGO – “Do you feel it trickle down?” ask the protesters occupying Wall Street and parts of financial districts from London to San Franc…

SANTIAGO – Visit London nowadays and you will notice something strange going on: the worse the British economy tanks, the more fervently Pri…

SANTIAGO – “Fasten your seat belts, because it should be a bumpy ride,” the captain warned from the cockpit. We were about to enter Argentin…

SANTIAGO – The day of the Eurobond may be near. What was once a quack’s idea for resolving Europe’s financial crisis is now the only reliabl…

SANTIAGO – European leaders, faced with the reality of an insolvent Greece, are reportedly now considering a “Plan B” that would involve red…

SANTIAGO – Few policy debates are stranger than the one concerning capital controls. Mention the issue to a banker or a mainstream economist…

SANTIAGO – The Inter-American Development Bank declared last July that this would be “Latin America’s Decade.” A couple of months later, The…

SANTIAGO – Take a taxi in São Paulo nowadays and you will experience the maddening traffic and untidy streets of an emerging-country metropo…