Latin America had the highest tariffs in the world before 1914; Asia had the lowest. Heavily protected Latin America also boasted some of the most explosive belle époque growth, while open Asia registered some of the least. What brought the two regions to the opposite ends of the tariff policy spectrum? We find that limits to Asian tariff policy autonomy may have lowered tariffs substantially there, but by themselves they cannot explain why Asian tariffs were so much lower than the Latin American tariffs before 1914; that natural barriers, domestic political economy and strategic tariff policy seems to have contributed much to the difference and that the origins of Asian post-World War 2 import-substitution policies seem to lie in the interwar years when Asian tariff levels caught up with those of Latin America.

This paper is an attempt at assessing the economic impact of market-oriented reforms undertaken during General Franco's dictatorship, in particular the 1959 Stabilisation and Liberalisation Plan. Using an index of macroeconomic distortions, the relationship between economic policies and the growth record is examined. Although a gradual reduction in macroeconomic distortions was already in motion during the 1950s, the 1959 Plan opened the way to a new institutional design that favoured a free market allocation of resources and allowed Spain to accelerate growth and catch up with Western Europe. Without the 1950s reforms and, especially, the 1959 Plan, per capita GDP would have been significantly lower in 1975.

The historiography emphasizes the importance of the fiscal policy and regional differences as causes of Hispano-American independences. The Consolidación de los Vales Reales (1804-1809), an endorsement of the debt contracted to its colonies by Spain in order to finance its constant wars, caused the collapse of the Mexican Treasury and was a key factor in its independence. This article demonstrates that in Cuba, the Consolidation had a different effect. Thanks to its different institutionalization and fiscal praxis, it was used to alleviate the deficit of situados, with which the Mexican Treasury financed the Cuban, and it may help to understand the reasons for non-independence. However, to prove this requires reconstructing the accounts of the Cuban Consolidation, which also demonstrates that the data used up until now were erroneous.

This article discusses the evolution of the total and social public expenditure in Uruguay during the 20th century. It analyzes the growth path of the social public expenditure and the extent up to which it could be preserved from the cyclical economic downturns and the fiscal constraints of the Public Sector. The paper finds a low long-run elasticity of public spending to GDP – leading to a slow growth of social public expenditure and a remarkable procyclical pattern of total and social public expenditure. It also shows that social spending, especially education expenditure, has often been used as an instrument to curb budget deficits. No distinctive «fiscal regimes» for the period could be identified.

The paper analyses exchange rate regimes implemented by the major Latin American (LA) countries since the 1950s, with special attention to the period beginning in the 1970s. The aim is to evaluate the relationship between exchange rate regimes and macroeconomic performance. After an overview of the main trends followed by the major LA countries over the last 60 years, the paper focusses on regimes that were implemented (1) with stabilisation purposes (nominal anchor) and (2) with the aim of targeting competitive and stable real exchange rates. These sections analyse in greater detail some important links between exchange rate regimes and macroeconomic performance. The paper closes with an assessment of the experiences with exchange rate regimes in LA.