Finance,PoliticsDemocracy:LAC

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive and comparative understanding on how the state’s public finances (revenues, expenditures, and debt) interact with politics and policies. It builds from a comparative and comprehensive literature specialized in the Latin American and the Caribbean region (LAC region) to claim that the state’s public finances are directly and inextricably related with politics and policy rather than being just a utility function of economics and finance. Globally, the LAC region is seen as a group of countries which denote a high degree of poverty and inequality. In developed countries, the capacity of governments to extract resources from economic activity, manage and spend them with both a redistributive and productive approach is a key element to reduce poverty and inequality and guarantee stable economic growth and, perhaps more important, development for all. Unfortunately, governments in the LAC region do not raise the sufficient amount of revenue to build a strong, efficient, and effective public sector nor are they capable to deliver goods and services, as well as public investments to reduce poverty and inequality or promote economic growth. The result is that public finance is highly constrained by scarce resources, and strongly politicized. How the government’s financial resources, i.e. the public budget- in Latin America is intertwined with politics, policy, and the economy? This course will try to understand when, how and why the public budget is another way to understand politics, policy, and the economy in the LAC region.