Growth Opportunities for Chile

This volume presents 11 papers written by renowned, national and international scholars that add substantially to the body of empirical research and policy lessons on how to raise economic growth and prosperity in Chile. This book presents a large body of new empirical evidence on the effects of the low quality of education on growth, productivity, the adoption and innovation of new technologies and it also suggests policies to enhance quality and equity at all levels of the educational system. New findings about the effects of the successive energy price hikes on growth and productivity are the foundation to discuss policies reducing the price of energy to boost growth. Other research discusses the dynamics of productivity in Chile, the performance of economic sectors in accounting for such dynamics, the effects of labor market policies in slowing the reallocation process towards high-productivity activities, reforms to financial markets and failures of the policymaking process and institutions and reforms to improve them. All papers recommend policies that would eventually lead the country to a virtuous cycle featuring high growth and better income distribution. This volume also includes a discussion of the MIT economist Daron Acemoglu about why Latin America is poor today, in light of the findings of his best selling book Why Nations Fail (co-written with James Robinson) in order to address Chile’s long-term challenges to achieve economic development. In the final chapter of the book Acemoglu, along with the MIT economist Ricardo Caballero, Vittorio Corbo, Patricio Meller and Jorge Marshall discuss the challenges that Chile is facing to boost growth and to reduce inequality.