ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Julio Lopez and Clemente Ruiz contrasts two alternative scenarios of growth and indebtedness for a representative group of Latin American economies. A more careful examination of the characteristics of the recovery process, which started in 1984, and of the policies associated with it provides more clues to differences in economic performance of the different Latin American economies than an analysis of decade averages. The rather depressing outcome of the eighties is attributed by the authors to International Monetary Fund-inspired policies which reduced imports and investment in order to effectuate the net transfer of resources required to service the debt. It also serves as a basis of comparison for the growth with equity strategy which the authors propose for the 1990s, and with which it shares the goals of economic growth, of job creation, and of trade surpluses to help service the external debt.
