Accountability and Market Reform Failures in Emerging Markets

Seminar with Dr Luigi Manzetti from Southern Methodist University. Arranged by the Center of the Study of the Americas.

Thursday, November 8, 2007 - 15:15 to 16:15

Dr Luigi Manzetti (Southern Methodist University)

Accountability and Market Reform Failures in Emerging Markets

Economists have recently underscored that the failure of market reforms in producing sustained growth in emerging markets is the result of the International Monetary Fund's poor advice as well as erroneous macroeconomic policies of domestic decision-makers.

In this talk Dr Manzetti proposes a complementary hypothesis. If market reforms are enacted in a political system with weak accountability institutions, then we should expect the executive to manipulate such reforms in order to pursue old-fashioned practices like collusion between government and business, political patronage, and corruption.

This, in turn, ends up depriving a given economy of potential advantages had the reforms promoted true competition rather that reallocating monopolistic rents while squandering a large amount of resources.

LUIGI MANZETTI is Associate Professor of Political Science and has been the Director of Latin American Studies at Southern Methodist University between 2000-04 and 2006-07. Dr Manzetti has been a consultant for the U.S. Agency on International Development, the United States Information Agency, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The page was last edited by: Communications // 10/29/2007