Back to the future: Latin America's current development strategy

Abstract

In the years 2002 to 2006, Latin America registered, on average, one of the highest growth rates in over two decades. The empirical evidence suggests that the good economic performance of the past six years is increasingly and strongly correlated either with a positive terms-of-trade shock, mostly in South America, or with the increase in the flow of remittances, particularly in Central and North America. In other words, Latin America now exports commodities and people. The paper shows the possible limitations of this development strategy.