This report, rooted in the conflict over the control of natural resource wealth, departs from the widely-accepted findings of two disparate literatures. First, while recent analyses correctly conclude that natural resources rents play a contingent role in development, this study deviates from the conventional wisdom attributing the variation of the resource curse to formal institutions. Secondly, as opposed to the recent wave of “political insurance” arguments that ascribe the creation of reforms to weak incumbents attempting to tie the hands of their successors, I argue that actors pursue similar institutional reforms for economic and political reasons. I build on these literatures by examining the commitment to a specific government institution—stabilization funds, which manage the fluctuations of natural resource rents and stop natural resource wealth from being a curse—across three natural resource-rich Latin American countries: Chile, Mexico and Venezuela. Paradoxically, because successful stabilization funds provide greater political benefits when rents are saved, I argue that these institutions only tie the hands of political successors from using rents for political purposes when they are created for economic purposes. / text

[pt] O objetivo principal do trabalho é avaliar as vantagens e desvantagens associadas à utilização, no âmbito de uma pequena economia aberta, de um mecanismo de intervenção sobre variações dos preços relativos domésticos de insumos intermediários comerciáveis. Esse mecanismo pode ser implementado por meio de uma combinação de tributos e subsídios às importações e exportações dos insumos comerciáveis, com alíquotas variáveis ao longo do tempo. Tal intervenção assume o papel de um instrumento auxiliar de estabilização que, ao ser manejado de forma coordenada com a taxa de juros nominal e os demais instrumentos convencionais de política monetária, pode vir a melhorar a resposta da economia aos choques que a atingem. Um exemplo concreto desse tipo de mecanismo é a CIDE (Contribuição de Intervenção sobre o Domínio Econômico), que tinha entre seus intuitos originais impedir que a volatilidade do preço do petróleo no mercado internacional se transmitisse integralmente aos preços domésticos dos derivados. O trabalho, portanto, destina-se a analisar e responder as seguintes questões: (i) determinar as circunstâncias nas quais a intervenção sobre os preços internacionais dos insumos pode se somar à manipulação da taxa de juros nominal na tentativa de melhor estabilizar a economia; (ii) investigar a natureza da intervenção ótima, ou seja, como o instrumento auxiliar e a taxa de juros nominal devem se movimentar conjuntamente em resposta aos choques; e (iii) medir os ganhos de bem estar que advêm da disponibilidade desse instrumento auxiliar de estabilização. / [en] The main purpose of the current work is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using a mechanism which intervenes in domestic relative prices of tradable intermediate goods. Such a mechanism can be implemented by a combination of taxes and subsidies to imports and exports of tradable intermediate goods, with rates that vary over time. This intervention performs as an auxiliary stabilization instrument that is managed in a coordinated fashion with more conventional ones, such as the nominal interest rate. In the end this work will look into the matters of (i) investigating the circumstances under which the intervention in international commodity prices, together with the nominal interest rate, might help in the task of stabilizing the economy; (ii) determining the optimal response of the available instruments to the shocks that hit the economy; and (iii) measuring the welfare consequences of the availability of this auxiliary stabilization instrument.

La crise de la dette externe latino-américaine des années 1980 a consacré le passage du modèle d’industrialisation par substitution des importations à un modèle de développement fondé sur la libéralisation de l’économie. La transition est provoquée par les politiques d’ajustement et de stabilisation macro-économique du FMI. Ces mesures vont être poursuivies, consolidées et approfondies par la Banque Mondiale et la coopération internationale au développement, à travers des réformes structurelles qui vont provoquer des bouleversements au sein des Etats et des sociétés. Cela a généré un malaise social qui s’est traduit par des mobilisations dans presque tous les pays de la région. Ces mobilisations sociales contre l’ajustement et la réforme structurelle néolibérale ont donné lieu à de nouveaux discours politiques. Parmi eux, le Buen Vivir qui a été incorporé aux Constitutions bolivienne et équatorienne en 2008. Le Buen Vivir rassemble et synthétise les revendications pour un modèle de développement solidaire, écologique et dans lequel les droits fondamentaux des êtres humains, parmi lesquels le droit à la différence radicale, sont respectés. Le discours du Buen Vivir récupère les critiques formulées par le post-développement et la décroissance en les intégrant en une nouvelle dimension qui donne une nouvelle place à l’altérité en économie. / The crisis of the Latin American external debt of the eighties meant the change of the model of industrialization by substitution of imports towards a model of sustained development in the liberalization of the economy. The transition was triggered by IMF macroeconomic adjustment and stabilization policies. These measures were continued, consolidated and deepened by the World Bank and International Development Cooperation, through structural reforms that brought about changes in the State and society. This generated social unrest that was expressed in mobilizations, claims and rejections in almost all countries in the region. These social mobilizations against neoliberal structural adjustment and reform gave rise to new political discourses. One of them is the Good Living (Buen Vivir), that was incorporated into the Political Constitution of Ecuador and Bolivia in 2008. Buen Vivir collects the demands for a model of friendly, supportive development, friendly to nature and in which the fundamental rights of human beings, including the right to radical difference, are respected. The discourse of Good Living reflects the criticisms of development made by post-development and decline, and integrates them into a new dimension, which refers to otherness in the economy.