TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dornbusch,Rudiger
AU  - Edwards,Sebastian
TI  - Macroeconomic Populism in Latin America
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2986
PY  - 1991
Y2  - March 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2986
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2986.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Rudiger Dornbusch

Sebastian Edwards
UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Business
110 Westwood Plaza, Suite C508
Box 951481
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481
Tel: 310/206-6797
Fax: 310/206-5825
E-Mail: sebastian.edwards@anderson.ucla.edu
AB  - Macroeconomic populism is an approach to economics that emphasizes growth and income distribution and deemphasizes the risks of inflation and deficit finance, external constraints and the reaction of economic agents to aggressive non-market policies. The purpose of our paper is to show that policy experiences in different countries and periods share common features, from the initial conditions, the motivation for policies, the argument that the country's conditions are different, to the ultimate collapse. Our purpose in setting out these experiences, those of Chile under Allende and of Peru under Garcia, is not a righteous assertion of conservative economics, but rather a warning that populist policies do ultimately fail; and when they fail it is always at a frightening cost to the very groups who were supposed to be favored. Our central thesis is that the macroeconomics of various experiences is very much the same, even if the politics differed greatly.
ER  -