Friday, June 28, 2013

Notorious Economists: President Rafael Correa Edition

Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa was trained to be an economist who, according the the Guardian, specialised in game theory.  He obtained a scholarship to study at the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil (UCSG in Spanish), a private higher education institution in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in economics in 1987.

 He received a Master of Arts in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium in June 1991. He later studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a Master of Science in Economics in May 1999, and a PhD in Economics in October 2001.

In his doctoral dissertation, titled "Three Essays on Contemporary Latin American Development", Correa argued that the structural reforms instituted in Latin America beginning in the 1980s, failed as drivers for growth in the region.

He holds strong socialist beliefs:
Socialism will continue. The Ecuadorian people voted for that. We are going to emphasize this fight for social justice, for regional justice. We are going to continue the fight to eliminate all forms of workplace exploitation within our socialist conviction: the supremacy of human work over capital. Nobody is in any doubt that our preferential option is for the poorest people, we are here because of them. Hasta la victoria siempre! (Until victory, for ever)

3 comments:

  1. When compared to the death and destruction that financialised capital has wrought upon this earth through their enablers in central banks and the practitioners in the international banking system, a 2 bit socialist president is hardly someone to worry about.

    You're barking up the wrong tree, RW.

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  2. The government administration of President Rafael Correa Delgado—who was re-elected to another four-year term in February of 2012 by a wide margin – has prioritized strengthening the productive base and improving government planning capacity. Public investment has increased, from 21% of GDP in 2006 to nearly 42% in 2012. A large share of resources is allocated to programs and projects for investment in infrastructure and social sectors.

    Economic growth in Ecuador has been inclusive, which has directly reduced poverty and inequality levels and increased the middle class. Between 2006 and 2012, income poverty (using the national poverty line) fell from 37.6% to 27.3% whereas extreme poverty declined from 16.9% to 11.2%.

    Moreover, inequality in Ecuador decreased faster than the average for the region: the Gini coefficient fell from 54 to 48 between 2006 and 2012 whereas the middle class increased from 20% to 26% of the population between 2006 and 2009. This is because income growth among the poorest citizens surpassed that of the average for the total population: between 2000 and 2011, the highest growth in income occurred in the poorest two quintiles of the population. Income of the poorest 40% of the population rose 8.8% compared with 5.8% for the average for the total population. Source http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ecuador/overview

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