La productividad y el desarrollo en América Latina dos interpretaciones

Abstract

This paper discusses the two main explanations that have been offered of why productivity growth slowed down in Latin America since the early 1980´s, presenting detailed evidence on this phenomenon for six of the largest economies in the Latin American region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru). In one vision, that the paper criticizes, the main problem obstructing productivity growth are the high rates of informality that prevail in the region and that have their origin in credit markets that perform poorly, high taxes and high tax evasion, as well as the incentives to informality generated by social and labor policies. An alternative vision considers the productivity growth slowdown after 1980 as largely endogenous, determined by the output growth slowdown and the fall in the rate of capital accumulation that followed from the shocks of the 1980´s