Senior Fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez leads CGD’s research on Latin America, examining the impact of global economic trends, domestic financial regulations, regionalism, and rich-country regulatory frameworks. CGD President Nancy Birdsall, a former executive vice-president of the Inter-American Development Bank, is a major contributor to CGD’s work on the region.
The Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee
Since September 2004, CGD has hosted the meetings of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, also known as the Comité Latino Americano de Asuntos Financieros or CLAAF. The group includes leading economists from the region and is chaired by Rojas-Suarez. It meets periodically to discuss regional financial issues and to make policy recommendations, which are made public in a statement summarizing the discussion.
The group released its latest statement, Too Early to Lower the Guard: How Will Latin America Fare If Macroeconomic Imbalances in Industrial Countries Intensify? on December 8, 2009.
Integration in the Americas
Former CGD visiting fellow Nancy Lee has worked on addressing constraints to growth and income convergence in the Western Hemisphere through regional integration. Her CGD Note and video suggest a fresh approach to regional integration in the form of a proposed regional investment agreement.
Publications
Growing Pains in Latin America: An Economic Growth Framework as Applied to Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru -- In this CGD publication, senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez and a task force of experts and country teams explore constraints to growth in the region as a whole and within countries. The book advances tangible, country-specific policy reforms that have a realistic chance of implementation. Growing Pains proposes reforms that are both meaningful and accessible to all who are interested in development in Latin America—from policies for public servant promotion in Peru to the structure of the antitrust regulatory body in Mexico to rules governing congressional procedures in Costa Rica.
