Latin America Seminar
| Date&Time | Tuesday, June 7, 2016, 3:10pm-4:40pm |
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| Place | Room 208 at Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies (Building No.5) |
| Intended Audience | Faculties, Graduate Students, Undergraduates, and People with Equivalent Knowledge |
| Language | English |
| Note | Copies of the paper will be available at Office of Promoting Research Collaboration. |
3:10pm-4:40
| Speaker | Fausto MEDINA-LOPEZ |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | Special Senior Advisor, Inter-American Development Bank [USA]/ Former Deputy Representative, IDB Office in Asia |
| Topic | Policy Adjustments After the End of the Commodity Boom: The Latin American Experience |
| Abstract | With the global economy taking too long to recover, the gradual slowdown and rebalancing of economic activity in China, and the bursting of a bubble induced by a super commodity cycle boom that fed significant growth in many emerging market and developing economies since the early 2000s, many of those countries are facing today a harsher world than they did just a few years ago and are now forced to undertake necessary policy adjustments in the midst of a difficult and protracted transition to a new economic equilibrium. Although the growth outlook varies substantially within the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), depending on their degree of economic diversification and commodity and trade patterns, the substantial economic weight of the largest net commodity exporting countries of South America, is expected to result in a second consecutive year of contraction for the Latin American and Caribbean region, as a whole. As the lower commodity prices and the much less robust growth in China seem to be here to stay, policymakers in those LAC net commodity exporters find themselves caught up in a dilemma between what they would like to do (ease policies to stimulate growth and employment in the short-run) and what they are compelled to do (tighten policies to retain macroeconomic viability while adjusting domestic demand to levels that are compatible with fall in income originated from the deteriorating terms of trade. The policy issues revolve around two critical questions, one backward-looking and another forward-looking: (i) should policy makers have acted differently during the windfall of the commodity boom? and, (ii) what should policy makers do now? This dilemma plays out in all crucial policy dimensions?monetary, fiscal, external, and social, and its discussion will be the central focus of this special lecture. |