Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary Record
Publisher
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.
Publication Date
1990
Publisher location
Teaneck, New Jersey
Abstract/ Summary
"Privatization" is being promoted in this decade as the ultimate economic panacea. The latest "privatization craze" began in 1980 in Britain under Margaret Thatcher and has since spread throughout the industrialized nations of the world, such as France, Japan, the United States. More recently, the policy of privatization has been introduced in Mexico, Brazil, and other Third World countries. Billions of dollars of public assets have already been sold on the market to private investors and billions more of government tax revenues have been contracted out to private firms during this decade.
What precisely is this latest economic phenomenon sweeping through the economies of the nonsocialist world? Why are privatization programs instituted? What are their motivations and objectives? What do they accomplish? These are some of the more important questions raised by the privatization phenomenon, and the answers are being provided by many scholars, One thing is certain, however: the debate is far from over, and definitive, objective. and conclusive answers to these questions have yet to be provided to a largely uninformed public.
Although the geographical focus of this discussion is Latin America. it begins with a consideration of privatization in the center. or industrialized, nations of the world: it is here where the philosophy. policy, and programs of privatization originated and from where they are being imposed upon the dependent. peripheral countries of the third world. It then takes up Latin America's privatization programs, particularly those in Brazil and Mexico. Combined, this approach provides a holistic view of contemporary privatization from a number of different perspectives.
Repository Citation
Burke, Melvin, "Privatization in the Center and the Latin American Periphery" (1990). School of Economics Faculty Scholarship. 3.
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/eco_facpub/3
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Burke, M. (1990). Privatization in the center and the Latin American periphery. Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary Record, Vol. 7.
Publisher Statement
© Copyright 1990 by Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.
Version
other