A lecture by Felipe Larraín Bascuñán, Minister of Finance of the Government of Chile

Contributor(s): Felipe Larraín Bascuñán | Since March 2010, Felipe Larraín Bascuñán has been the Minister of Finance of the Government of President Sebastián Piñera. Felipe gained a PhD (1985) and Master of Arts (1983) in Economics from Harvard University, and Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Universidad Católica de Chile (1981), he has a vast experience as an international consultant, academician, editor and author of more than 10 books and 120 professional articles, both published in Latin America, U.S.A., Europe and Asia. Since 1996, he has been a Professor of Economics at Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, where he previously served as Associate and Assistant Professor. From 1997 to 2002 he was affiliated to Harvard University, first as the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies (1997-99), then as Faculty Fellow (1999-2002). Since 1985, he has served as economic advisor to several American governments, including Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela. Felipe Larraín has been a consultant on macroeconomic issues to the United Nations, the World Bank, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He is the editor and author of ten books, including: Desarrollo Económico en Democracia: Proposiciones para una Sociedad Libre y Solidaria (Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile: Santiago, 1987); Debt, Adjustment and Recovery: Latin America's Prospects for Growth and Development (Basil Blackwell: Oxford and New York, 1989); The Public Sector and the Latin American Crisis (ICS Press: San Francisco, 1991); Chile Hacia el 2000 (CEP: Santiago, Chile, 1994); La Transformación Económica de Chile (CEP: Santiago, Chile, 2000); Capital Flows, Capital Controls and Currency Crises: Latin America in the 1990s (University of Michigan Press, 2000); Economic Development in Central America, Vols I and II (Harvard University Press, 2001); and Macroeconomics at Practice (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004).