Latin America has had an active presence in international markets since independence in the early nineteenth century. Participation has been quite volatile, though. International borrowing financed the wars of independence in the early 1800s, but the boom that started in 1822 with a loan to Colombia ...

The debt crisis of the 1980s confirmed what most economists already knew well: the public sector cannot be trusted to make the rigth choices on behalf of society, especially in matters-such as foreign borrowing- whose ultimate costs may not be fully internalized by voters. The failure of the public ...