ABSTRACT
During recent years, the economic thinking that shaped policy-making in Chile has rightly been identified with ‘supply-side’ economics and with monetarist doctrines. The faith in free markets, and in their ability to guide an economy towards higher growth and stability, has been predominant. Although similar policies have been applied in other countries, the radicalism in this case is unusual; of course, we cannot simply draw conclusions from this one case, but I think that the analysis will nevertheless suggest a number of common problems that are likely to emerge from the actual implementation of conservative economics, especially in the context of small economies in a semi-industrial stage of development.
