Speaking at the 38th Washington Conference on the Americas, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn called for increased private and public investment and greater productivity as key factors for sustaining recent economic growth. A rebalancing of China’s exchange rate and policies to reduce the growth in food prices will be some of the next challenges facing the region and the world.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

As host of both a major EU-Latin American summit and the 2008 APEC meetings, Peru has the opportunity to showcase its thriving growth. Rising food prices and the task of finding ways for prosperity to reach rural areas remain as challenges.

Consumption and domestic demand are helping to fuel an economy that recorded a 5.4 percent increase in real GDP growth last year. AS/COA examines Brazil’s boom in areas ranging from credit to construction and insurance.

The hemisphere-wide commodity-led boom is unlikely to improve competitiveness without sweeping reforms in the areas of infrastructure, institutions, and human capital, according to Jerry Haar of Florida International University. His new book, Can Latin America Compete? Confronting the Challenges of Globalization, will be launched at AS/COA.

Targeted monetary transfer programs such as Brazil's Bolsa Família represent bold new alternatives in the field of poverty alleviation. Do they work as well as their advocates claim? Read the entire article in the Spring 2008 issue of Americas Quarterly.

Brazil leads the hemisphere in IPOs, but the region as a whole lags far behind other emerging markets.