See below for a list of REPAL 2015 participants!
Check the latest version of the Conference Program here.
Blog
Speakers for Special Panel on Uruguay at REPAL 2015
Desafíos de la política energética / The challenges of Energy Policy
Dr. Ramón Méndez
Ramón Méndez es Doctor en Ciencias Físicas de la Universidad de La Plata, Argentina. Actualmente ocupa el cargo de Director de la Dirección Nacional de Energía en el Ministerio de Industria, Energía y Minería, y es el Presidente de la Administradora del Mercado Eléctrico. Previo a su ejercicio en el ámbito público, el Dr. Méndez ha estado fuertemente vinculado con la academia a través de la docencia y la investigación en diversas universidades de la región y de Europa. Adicionalmente ha desempeñado cargos de dirección en organismos internacionales, como la Agencia Internacional de Energías Renovables (IRENA).
Mr. Ramón Méndez has a PhD in Physics from the Universidad de La Plata, Argentina. He is currently the Director of the National Energy Office in the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining, as well as President of the Electric Market Administration. Before serving in the public administration, Mr. Méndez has been strongly involved in academy, teaching and researching in several universities in the region and in Europe. In addition, he has held executive posts in international organizations, such as the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Desafíos de la reforma educativa / The challenges of Educational Reform
Dr. Fernando Filgueira
Fernando Filgueira es PhD en Sociología por Northwestern University, Estados Unidos. El Dr. Filgueira ha ocupado cargos en el ámbito académico, en organismos internacionales y en el gobierno nacional. En su desempeño académico ha hecho aportes significativos sobre temas de desarrollo, desigualdad y pobreza. Desde el ámbito de las políticas públicas, además de su vinculación con organismos como el Fondo de Población de las Naciones Unidas y la CEPAL (entre otras), ejerció cargos en la administración pública, en el Área de Gestión y Evaluación del Estado y en la Administración Nacional de Educación Pública. Adicionalmente, en 2015 asumirá el cargo de subsecretario del Ministerio de Educación y Cultura.
Fernando Filgueira is PhD in Sociology (Northwestern University). He has carried out his expertise in the academic field as well as in international organizations and in the national government. His academic work, focused mainly on development and inequality, has been globally recognized. Filgueira worked for several IGOs (e.g. UNFPA and ECLAC) and held office in the national government, in the National Administration of Public Education and the Evaluation and in the State Management and Evaluation Agency. In addition, as of 2015, he will be the vice-minister of the Ministry of Education and Culture.
Desafíos de la política económica / The challenges of Economic Policy
Dr. Gabriel Oddone
Gabriel Oddone París es Doctor en Historia Económica por la Universidad de Barcelona y Economista por la Universidad de la República. Socio CPA / Ferrere e investigador de Cinve. Profesor Titular de Política Económica y de Fundamentos de Análisis Económico en la Universidad de la República. Ha sido consultor para el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) y el Banco Mundial en temas relacionados con la Modernización de la Administración Pública, Educación y Política Económica en Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, México, Paraguay y Uruguay. Ha publicado libros, ensayos y artículos académicos en temas relacionados con crecimiento, comercio internacional y política económica.
Gabriel Oddone París obtained his PhD in Economic History at the Universidad de Barcelona. He is partner of the firm CPA/Ferrere and researcher at Cinve (Center of Economic Investigations). Also regarding his academic role, he teaches Economic Policy and Foundations of Economic Analysis at the Universidad de la República and has published several books and articles on international commerce, growth and economic policy. In addition, Oddone has been a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank in several countries of the region.
Desafíos de las política social / The challenges of Social Policy
Dra. Verónica Amarante
Verónica Amarante es Doctora en Economía por la Universidad de Sussex, Inglaterra. Actualmente es la Directora de la CEPAL en Montevideo y docente titular en el Instituto de Economía de la Universidad de la República (del cual fue Directora en el 2011). Sus investigaciones se han enfocado principalmente en temas de pobreza, mercado laboral y desigualdades presentes en la región (desigualdad de ingresos, género, etc.). Amarante ha hecho numerosas contribuciones reconocidas por la academia que a su vez han sido insumos valiosos para la política pública. También se ha desempeñado como consultora para diversos organismos internacionales, como el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, el Banco Mundial y la Organización Internacional del Trabajo.
Verónica Amarante obtained her PhD in Economics at the University of Sussex. She currently holds the position of Director at ECLAC’s office in Montevideo. She is also a professor (and previous Director) of the Economics Insitute of the Universidad de la República. Her research has focused mainly on poverty, labor market and inequalities in the region (income inequality, gender inequality, among others). Amarante has made numerous contributions to the academia that have proven to be valuable inputs for public policy. In addition, she has worked as a consultant for international organizations, such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Labor Organization.
Opening Keynote Session
REPAL is proud to announce the opening session for the 2015 conference:
Ernesto Stein and Eduardo Fernandez Arias, InterAmerican Development Bank
“Rethinking Productive Development”
Call for papers for Repal 2015 annual conference is open
The Department of Social and Political Sciences at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay (UCU, Montevideo) will host the 2015 Repal conference, in 7-8 July 2015. Juan Bogliaccini (UCU) will chair the local organizing committee, and Ben Ross Schneider (MIT) and Angélika Rettberg (UNIANDES) will serve as program chairs.
Submission deadline for paper proposals is 15 December 2014. Send proposals to repalconference@gmail.com. Notification of acceptance will come by late January 2015.
Find out more here.
Matthew Carnes (Georgetown University) and Isabela Mares (Columbia University)’s paper awarded best paper from the 2014 REPAL annual conference
Matthew Carnes (Georgetown University) and Isabela Mares (Columbia University) ’s paper has been awarded “best paper” from the 2014 REPAL annual conference.
The prize committee was Ken Shadlen (LSE), Daniela Campello (FGV-Rio), and Eduardo Dargent (PUC Perú).
Best Paper
This paper revisits and challenges a dominant hypothesis in political economy about the preferences and power of “insiders.” The expectation that beneficiaries under a given set of arrangements will push for continuity and against measures that might dilute their gains is central, implicitly if not always explicitly, in many political economy explanations. Carnes and Mares suggest an alternative scenario, based on instability of the status quo arrangements, which is a common if not prevailing condition in developing countries, and they use original data from a survey to show how instability may affect preferences for redistribution. The panel found the paper to address an important topic of great relevance, with an excellent research design and data analysis, and to be nicely written.
Honorable Mention
Renato Lima de Oliveira (MIT) and Martin Liby Alonso (MIT) Fueling development? Assessing the Impact of Oil and Soybean Wealth on Municipalities in Brazil
The Lima-de-Oliveira and Alonso paper contributes to the emerging literature devoted to understanding how politics mediate the impact of the recent commodity boom experienced by Latin American countries. Taking advantage of the large variation in resource wealth among Brazilian municipalities, they test the hypothesis that natural resource revenues channelled through the state (oil) are more subject to the dynamics associated with a resource curse than those channeled directly through the market (soybean). They find empirical support for this hypothesis; in comparable municipalities, soybean wealth is positively associated with development outcomes, whereas these effects are negative in oil-rich municipalities.
REPAL member Gustavo Flores-Macías awarded by LASA
Gustavo Flores-Macías (Cornell University) has been awarded the Luciano Tomassini Latin American International Relations Book Award by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), for his book After Neoliberalism?: The Left and Economic Reforms in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press 2012). Congratulations to him.
Professor Flores-Macías will be attending the first annual REPAL conference in Santiago in June (9 and 10).
New Series at Palgrave Macmillan
REPAL is glad to inform about Latin American Political Economy, a new series from Palgrave Macmillan.
Latin American Political Economy publishes new, relevant, and empirically-grounded scholarship that deepens our understanding of contemporary Latin American political economy and contributes to the formulation and evaluation of new theories that are both context-sensitive and subject to broader comparisons. Inspired by the need to provide new analytical perspectives for understanding the massive social, political, and economic transformations underway in Latin America, the series is directed at researchers and practitioners interested in resurrecting political economy as a primary research area in the developing world. In thematic terms, the series seeks to promote vital debate on the interactions between economic, political, and social processes; it is especially concerned with how findings may further our understanding of development models, the sociopolitical institutions that sustain them, and the practical problems they confront. In methodological terms, the series showcases cross-disciplinary research that is empirically rich and sensitive to context and that leads to new forms of description, concept formation, causal inference, and theoretical innovation. The series editors welcome submissions that address patterns of democratic politics, dependency and development, state formation and the rule of law, inequality and identity, and global linkages.
The series is affiliated with REPAL.
REPAL in LASA
REPAL will hold two panels during the next LASA conference (Chicago, May 21-24, 2014): “Is the revitalization of Latin American political economy necessary?” and “New Research Frontiers in Latin American Political Economy”.
On Friday 23, at 10am, Juan Pablo Luna (PUC Chile), Victoria Murillo (Columbia) and Andrew Schrank (University of New Mexico) will host a roundtable to discuss the current state of Latin American political economy as a field of study. Ernesto Calvo (University of Maryland), Alberto Díaz-Cayeros (Univeristy of California San Diego), Tulia Falleti (University of Pennsylvania) and Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida (Universidade de Sao Paulo) are invited to discuss the following questions: Is a political economic approach necessary or even useful? If so, what should it look like? Are contemporary political economists meeting the challenge? And, if not, what might be done about it?
The same day at 2 pm, a second panel will address the political economies of growth and distribution during Latin America’s recent commodity boom. The first two papers (Juan Pablo Luna and Victoria Murillo) will address the politics of natural resource exports in the Southern Cone in particular: Who wins? Who loses? How? And why? The remaining papers will focus on distributional questions including taxation (Tasha Fairfield, LSE, and Nora Lustig, Tulane), redistribution, and social protection (Candelaria Garay, Harvard University). Evelyn Huber as discussant will explore the intersection between the political economy of production, on the one hand, and the political economy of redistribution, on the other.