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Peruvian Economic Policy in the 1980s: From Orthodoxy to Heterodoxy and Back
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2022
Extract
Looking back over patterns of economic adjustment and structural reform in Latin America since the debt crisis began in 1982, two broad trends stand out. The first is the dramatic fluctuation in macroeconomic policy between the orthodox programs traditionally advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the more interventionist or “heterodox” strategies that marked the policy environment after 1985 (Sheahan 1989). Although the orthodox-heterodox policy cycle is hardly new to the region and in fact has characterized the policy-making experience over the entire postwar era (Kaufman 1990), the 1980s represented the intensification of this cycle, especially in the extremity to which each set of policies was applied. The second trend follows from the first: the inability of states to follow through coherently on any given policy course (Fishlow 1989). While some exceptions to this trend can be cited (Chile, for example), the Latin American pattern has generally been one of failed adjustments and changed courses.
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- Copyright © 1992 by the University of Texas Press
Footnotes
We would like to thank Luis Arreaga, Mercedes Inez Carazo, Daniel Carbonetto, Jorge Chávez Alvarez, Oscar Dancourt, César Herrera, Jenny Hoyle Cox, Esteban Hynilizca, Jürgen Schuldt, Julio Velarde, and many others for their insightful comments and criticism during our visits in Lima in 1985–1988 and 1990. We would also like to thank the LARR anonymous reviewers for helping us clarify our argument and analysis, the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos and the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima for their institutional support, and the Fulbright Commission in Lima for its financial support over the years. Manuel Pastor wishes to thank the Guggenheim Foundation for its more recent support and Carol Wise, the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame; both thank Eric Hilt for his able research assistance. This article is dedicated to Alex Secada.
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