quinta-feira, junho 12, 2003
Don’t Blame Our Failures on Reforms that have Not Taken Place
Neste artigo, Francisco Gil Díaz do Fraser Institute afirma que não se pode culpar a economia de mercado (ou como se costuma dizer o neo-liberalismo) pelos problemas da América Latina. Com a excepção do Chile ainda faltam implementar muitas reformas para que o capitalismo (e logo a prosperidade) possam ser um facto consumado.
Como necessitando de reformas fundamentais o autor enumera as seguintes áreas:
Sistema Judicial
A market economy is based on property rights. Therefore, low predictability about the respect for contracts contributes to a general reluctance to undertake risk, and hence to invest. If sustainable growth is the result of an environment in which people find that their efforts, their work, and their ingenuity have a good chance of being rewarded, the clue to understanding stagnation or lack of sustained growth is to be found in judicial sectors with costly, corrupt, and unreliable outcomes
Barreiras Alfandegárias
Without the discipline of foreign competition, domestic markets are often concentrated and monopolized, firms become complacent, and their production relies on old equipment, backward technologies, and indifferent managerial skills. Closed economies don’t necessarily result in zero foreign investment, but they do result in foreign firms introducing outmoded capital goods and outdated technologies. The low ratio of international trade to GDP that a closed economy entails also means a greater vulnerability to shocks. This was demonstrated dramatically by the two crises in Mexico’s economy in 1983 and 1995: after the 1983 crisis, a closed economy meant that it took 7 years for Mexico’s industrial production to recover; in 1995, an open economy allowed Mexico’s economy to recover in only 18 months
Sector Público
Unions are often able to obtain inflated wages from public sector firms while some corrupt officials have been able to prosper through ill-gotten gains at the expense of these firms. Moreover, public sector ownership creates the temptation, all too often accepted, to subsidize prices for political reason. All of these factors—rent-seeking unions, corrupt officials, and subsidized prices—associated with public sector firms create a fiscal drain on government. It is no wonder that public debt has accumulated and that budget management is often compromised
Monopólios Regionais
Beyond the conspicuous monopolies left by privatizations that did not set out clear competitive rules for incumbent firms, large pockets of regional monopolies remain that make for clumsy market performance and raise the cost of capital expenditures
Deficits Orçamentais
(...)in most countries the pension burden hovers as a heavy future tax.3 Legislatures frequently approve programs, often with permanent expenditure commitments, that have no funding source
Federalismo
In countries that have imitated the American federalist mode, federalism has been interpreted not as competition amongst political units that provide bundles of taxes and public services to those who wish to establish themselves or their firms within, but rather as a battle cry to milk the federal treasury to avoid the political cost of local taxation
Educação
Education is generally poor—not necessarily poorly funded (...) Basic public education is generally centralized, with no objective evaluation systems that stimulate individual schools to compete in quality or provide prospective parents with information
Desregulação
New business units take many months to create—sometimes more than a year of paperwork—as well as requiring high outlays for several layers of petty corruption
Excusado será dizer que, embora se encontre num estádio de desenvolvimento mais avançado, a Europa incorre nos mesmo perigos da América Latina. São igualmente necessárias reformas em quase todas estas áreas. O excesso de estatismo e regulamentação (quer por via nacional quer via EU) são uma ameaça real à prosperidade.
posted by Miguel Noronha 5:44 da tarde
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