文档介绍：Finance-Led Development, or, Why People are Leaving El Salvador
Preliminary draft summary prepared for the Latin American Studies Association Congress
6 September 2001
Please do not quote without permission
John Schmitt William Stanley
Research Associate Political Science
Economic Policy Institute University of New Mexico
Washington, . Albuquerque, NM
jschmitt@ ******@
Summary of Economic Trends
El Salvador presents a paradox. Despite an average annual growth rate in real Gross Domestic Product from 1990 through 2000 of % (measured in US dollar terms, see Table 1), one encounters in El Salvador near despair regarding the country’s economic future. Public opinion polls show high public concern about employment and the economy overall, and anecdotal accounts from rural areas suggest that large numbers of young people in particular are giving up on El Salvador and heading for the United States. According to the conventional real GDP measures (in colons) issued by the Salvadoran Central Reserve Bank, growth clearly slowed during the final four years of the decade. Even by this measure, growth remained above the population growth rate for two of those four years – a mild recession, perhaps, but not a severe contraction. Overall poverty figures suggest gradual reductions in absolute and relative poverty, with the greatest improvements in the first part of the 1990s. Other factors such as a crime wave and the series of earthquakes in early 2001 have contributed to the public’s malaise, but economic disappointments appear to be central.
This paper explores the roots of this paradox by examining how major institutional changes in the post-war economy have affected the relative ess of different sectors. The ARENA government undertook a series of profound changes, beginning in 1989 with the re-privatization of banks that had been nationalized in 1980. Other measures followed that were ostensibly designed to open the economy and reduce the extent of