Wealth and Poverty in Latin America. The effects of the political economy of natural resources

PUYANA, ALICIA; COSTANTINO, MARÍA AGOSTINA; PÉREZ, KATYA

Grenoble

Conferencia; I International Conference on Public Policy; 2013

Latin America, or a large number of its countries, is returning to the international specialization of labor that was inherited from colonial times, and has maintained its influence until the last century when an attempt was made to break the dependency created by the region?s relative wealth in natural, mineral and agricultural resources. Gradually, one after another, there has been an increase in the exports of raw materials, and those derivatives that require little or no processing. These exports are subject to the known problems of price instability, and the macroeconomic risks that instability implies. Furthermore, there have been early signs of the decline or stagnation of the non-primary tradable sectors, whether of agricultural and manufacturing origin, or known effects of currency revaluations. For intensely urban societies without a dynamic manufacturing sector, these developments mean, on the one hand, the advance of services that are not necessarily of high productivity, and on the other an explosion of informality which translates to low productivity.