期刊名称：Discussion Papers / Ibero America Institute for Economic Research (IAI)
出版年度：2009
卷号：2009
出版社：Ibero America Institute for Economic Research
摘要：Latin America is the most unequal region of the world in terms of income or
expenditure, as well as regarding other aspects of economic or social exclusion.
The region suffered the lost decade of the nineteen eighties, and experienced a
modest recovery in the nineteen nineties. In the nineteen nineties, most of the
governments implemented stabilization politics, more or less close to the
proposals of the Washington Consensus. Paraguay itself, however, neither
suffered a debt crisis nor a mayor economic instability during the eighties, so
the stabilization policies would not have been necessary or useful for the
Paraguayan economy and business cycles in the nineties. Nevertheless, many of
the macroeconomic policies applied in Paraguay during the nineties were close to
the Washington Consensus. The most striking macroeconomic result of the decade
was a per capita income decrease beginning in late 1995, hand in hand with a
poverty increase after 1996. Given the persistently high levels of poverty
incidence in Paraguay to date, understanding the determinants of growth at the
household level in Paraguayan economy remains an important but under-researched
field in economics. This appears to be particularly true for the question
whether inequality has a positive or negative effect on economic growth, a
question that is both fundamental in (development) economics and highly relevant
for poverty reduction policies. Although the effect of inequality on growth has
important implications for poverty (Bourguignon, 2004; Ravallion, 1997),
empirical evidence on this link is virtually inexistent for Paraguay.
