Brazil, as the rest of Latin America, has experienced three cycles of capital inflows since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. The first two ended in financial crises, and at the time of writing the third one is still unfolding, although already showing considerable signs of distress. The...

This paper examines the current global scene of within-nations distributional disparities. There are three main conclusions: first, that the statistical evidence for the ‘upwards’ side of the “Inverted-U” between inequality and income per capita seems to have vanished, as many lowand...

As soon as international financial markets felt reassured in 2003 by the surprisingly neoliberal orientation of President Lula’s government, the ‘spot-the-new-Latin-tiger’ financial brigade became dazzled by Brazil — they just couldn’t have enough of it. So much so, that they had...

Latin America’s economic performance since the beginning of neo-liberal reforms has been poor; this not only contrasts with its performance pre-1980, but also with what was happening simultaneously in Asia. I shall argue that the weakness of the region’s new paradigm is rooted as much in its...