A Fascinating Region of Incredible Beauty

<正>My first visit to China was in 1986.After that I have been to this charming country several times and during these visits heard     

The Bottom Line: The Fundamental Weaknesses of Latin American Finance

Throughout the 1980s, Latin America experimented with financial liberalisation, which was supposed to solve the perpetual weaknesses of low savings, lack of access to capital, and the resulting stultifying effects on growth. We find that fundamental weaknesses in regional financial systems continue. We suggest that there are three basic policy reactions: a deepening of neoliberal policies; a neo‐structural reform of them; and a Bolivarian social reform‐oriented approach. While the neo‐structural approach has yielded the most promising performance, it is still limited. We conclude that the success of reforms lies in understanding and changing the calculations of the political beneficiaries of the status quo.     

Deregulation and Participation: An International Survey of Participation in Electricity Regulation

Amidst the wave of privatization and "deregulation" across the globe, a new set of regulatory structures is being created. The fact that deregulation actually involves "re-regulation" has been acknowledged in the recent literature, but the tension between regulation and public participation has been understudied in these new structures. While some private markets need effective regulation to reduce transactions costs and ensure stable market rules, consumers need regulation that is responsive to, and protective of, their interests. Consumer participation, therefore, is an important component of effective regulation. Effective regulation must also consider collective national or public interests, including the well-being of corporations. Therefore, regulatory agencies need to be both independent from, and responsive to corporate, consumer, and public interests. This article will briefly examine the tension among the competing goals of regulatory independence and responsiveness, and then conduct a broad survey of the status quo of public participation in national regulatory structures for electricity in the Americas. Our case studies demonstrate a wide variety of institutional mechanisms for participation, yet we find that no existing system seems to embrace direct participation by a wide set of consumers. The problems are even more acute in developing countries. We conclude by looking at recent experiments and proposals to improve the levels of participation in regulatory decision making.