Chile and the Neoliberal Trap The Post-Pinochet Era

This book analyzes Chile's political economy over the last 30 years and the country's attempt to build a market society in a highly inegalitarian society, now as a member country of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The investigation provides a historical background of Chilean economy and society and discusses the cultural underpinnings of the imposition of free markets, the macroeconomic and growth performance of the 1990s and 2000s and the social record of privatization of education, health and social security. The treatment documents the growing concentration of economic power among small groups of elites in Chile and discusses the limits of the democratic system built after the departure of the Pinochet regime.

1. From its past and present, Chile is poised to provide a better future for its people; 2. A brief history: the role of authoritarian conditions and crises in shaping political and economic orders in Chile; 3. Cementing Neoliberalism: a cultural revolution for the free market; 4. Economic-growth and macroeconomic performance in the 1990s and 2000s under four concertación governments; 5. The social record of the post-Pinochet administrations: poverty declines but high inequality persists; 6. The social policies of the 1990s and 2000s: Neoliberalism tempered with social protection?; 7. Concentration of economic power: the new elites of the super-rich, oligopolistic markets and dual productive structures; 8. Limits to Chilean democracy and the governance for capital; 9. Summary and issues for the future.

Andrés Solimano is founder and Chairman of the International Center for Globalization and Development. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr Solimano was a Regional Advisor at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Country Director at the World Bank and Executive Director at the Inter-American Development Bank. He was also Director of the project on International Mobility of Talent with the United Nations University-World Institute of Economic Research and served as Executive Director for Chile at the Board of the Inter-American Development Bank. Dr Solimano has written extensively on international migration, talent mobility, growth, inequality, political economy, macroeconomics and international development. His latest book is International Migration in the Age of Crisis and Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2010).