Liliana Rojas-Suarez
Senior Fellow and Director of the Latin America Initiative
Topics:
Expertise
Macroeconomic policy, international economics, financial markets, Latin America, regional public goods, digital financial inclusion
Bio
Liliana Rojas-Suarez is the Director of the Latin America Initiative and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development with expertise on Latin America, financial regulation, digital financial inclusion, Basel II and III, and the development impact of global financial flows. She is the co-author or editor of almost a dozen books, including Growing Pains in Latin America: An Economic Growth Framework as Applied to Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru. She co-chaired the CGD Task Forces on “Making Basel III Work for Emerging Markets and Developing Economies” and “Financial Regulations for Improving Financial Inclusion” and is currently working on the “Policy Decision Tree for Digital Financial Inclusion Policymaking” project.
She is also the chair of the Latin American Committee on Macroeconomic and Financial Issues (CLAAF) and Adjunct Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York. From March 1998 to October 2000, she served as managing director and chief economist for Latin America at Deutsche Bank. Before joining Deutsche Bank, Rojas-Suarez was the principal advisor in the Office of Chief Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank. Between 1984 and 1994 she held various positions at the International Monetary Fund, most recently as deputy chief of the Capital Markets and Financial Studies Division of the Research Department. She has been a visiting fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a visiting advisor at the Bank for International Settlements and at the Central Bank of Spain. She has also served as a professor at Anahuac University in Mexico and advisor for PEMEX, Mexico’s National Petroleum Company. Rojas-Suarez has also testified before a Joint Committee of the U.S. Senate on the issue of dollarization in Latin America.
She has published widely in the areas of macroeconomic policy, international economics and financial markets in a large number of academic and other journals including Journal of International Economics, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Contemporary Economic Policy, International Monetary Fund Staff Papers. She has also published or being cited in prestigious newspapers such as the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. She is also regularly interviewed by CNN en Español.
She was also awarded the prize “The Economist of the year,” granted by the Peruvian Chamber of Commerce in 2012.
Media Contact
Sean Bartlett
sbartlett@cgdev.org
In the News
September 16, 2020
Working Groups
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More From Liliana Rojas-Suarez
October 7, 2013
Blog Post
Emerging market currencies have seen a lot of action over the last few months. India’s rupee has fallen 20% against the dollar, the Indonesian rupiah and the Brazilian real are floundering after falling 15%, and Turkey’s lire has slipped 10%. I invited CGD senior fellows Liliana Rojas-Suarez and Arvind Subramanian to explain what’s driving the fluctuations. Since these economies have mosty been performing pretty well—consistently growing faster than the rich countries—to the untrained eye, the currency slides seem dramatic and unexpected.
September 4, 2013
Blog Post
This blog was originally posted on March 7, 2011.
Regulators at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, are hard at work designing regulatory standards to avoid future financial meltdowns like the global financial crisis of 2008. Joining them for two months is Liliana Rojas Suarez, a CGD senior fellow and the founding chair of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee.
September 3, 2013
Blog Post
It’s been a tough few months for emerging-market currencies. The top slider, India’s rupee, has fallen 20 percent against the US dollar. The Indonesian rupiah and the Brazilian real have fallen about 15 percent; Turkey’s lira is down about 10. As the currencies fall, so do the countries’ international reserves, creating what’s known in non-technical terms as a really bad situation.
June 4, 2013
Blog Post
My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is CGD senior fellow Liliana Rojas, chair of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (CLAAF), and our topic is the latest policy statement from CLAAF, which brings together the region’s top economists, mostly former ministers of finance and heads of central banks.
Pages
June 3, 2011
Article
The Latin-American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (CLAAF) will be launching their 24th statement on June 7th, 2011 at an event hosted by the Center for Global Development. CLAAF is a group of prestigious Latin-American economists with strong expertise in financial markets and other macroeconomic issues.
Liliana Rojas-Suarez, CGD senior fellow, presides the Committee. Among the Committee’s members are: Guillermo Calvo, Carmen Reinhart, Ricardo Hausman, Pablo Guidotti and Guillermo Ortiz (see complete list of members here). The goal of their policy statements is to raise the profile of issues affecting Latin America’s financial markets and influence the actions taken by the policymakers in the region. For this reason, their statements target Central Banks, regulatory agencies, the private sector, multilateral organizations and the press. CLAAF previous statements have drawn great interest by the press and policymakers in Latin America.
On June 7th, the Committee will focus on the potential damage to growth and stability in emerging market economies arising from the severe problems facing developed countries, which include the intensification of the European debt crisis and the increased concern on the United States’ sovereign debt problem.
In particular, the Committee will address the following questions:
a) Could current difficulties in the developed countries lead to a fresh global crisis of “Lehman’s dimensions”? b) Could the resilience shown by many emerging markets, especially Latin America, during the 2008-09 global crisis be repeated if a new severe global disruption were to emerge? c) Have early signals of economic and financial instability already appeared in Latin America? d) What policy options should Latin America take to avoid a “band aid approach” where many small remedies fail to achieve the desired cure?
Register for the event here.
Additional media information and information on the Spanish media conference call is available here.
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