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Economic Policy and Latin American Culture: Is a Virtuous Circle Possible?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 1999

DAVID E. HOJMAN
DAVID E. HOJMAN
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Abstract

Economic development is positively related to the presence of favourable cultural attitudes (‘progressive values’): the radius of trust, the ethical system, the nature of the exercise of authority, and attitudes to work, savings, and innovation. This article explores the possibility of a virtuous circle linking economic policies and Latin American cultural attitudes, mostly using examples from Chile since the mid 1980s. The link from culture to development emerges from education, economic awareness and professional economics, and the traditional culture and spontaneous cultural change. The link from economic policy to culture is represented by developments in macroeconomics and the financial sector, industrial protection and free trade, and female participation in the labour market. The role of poverty and inequality, and the effectiveness of exhortation versus incentives, and of concentrating the effort on several specific groups, are also examined.

Type
COMMENTARY
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , February 1999 , pp. 167 - 190
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank, without implicating, Lawrence E. Harrison, who was the first scholar to ask the questions this article attempts to answer, and who invited me to present a previous version of it at a World Bank/INCAE conference on the subject, in Washington DC in February 1998; Shanti P. Chakravarty, who convinced me that social choice paradoxes could be used productively in the Latin American context; and two anonymous JLAS referees.