Andrei Shleifer: The Age of Milton Friedman

Paper do professor de Harvard, Andrei Shleifer, recentemente publicado no Journal of Economic Literature. Ele aponta os dois principais problemas das economias que adotaram reformas de livre mercado: Escassez de capital humano e
políticas fiscais predatórias.
The two areas of the
world facing most dramatic economic challenges
today are Africa and Latin America.
When thinking about their growth performance,
surely the most obvious problem is
the lack of new businesses and investment,
particularly in the formal sector. It seems
highly unlikely that the central challenges
have to do with whether inflation should be
above or below 10 percent (so long as public
deficits are under control), or whether there
should be a 0 or 1 percent transaction tax
on capital flows (so long as capital markets
are broadly open). It seems obvious that the
central challenges have to do with the shortages
of human capital, and with predatory
regulatory and tax policies conducted by
African and Latin American states. Indeed,
my feeling is that reducing the burdens of
(particularly corporate) taxation and regulation,
and replacing extremely inefficient regulations
with more appropriate ones, are the
central challenges facing many developing
countries today. The World Bank has properly
drawn attention to the necessary reforms
through its Doing Business report, and we
have seen significant steps toward progress,
especially among transition economies.