Taxation and government spending are key policy levers the state has in its power to change the distribution of income determined by the prevailing distribution of wealth, market forces, and institutions. How much income redistribution and poverty reduction are being accomplished through fiscal systems in Latin America and the Caribbean? How equalizing or unequalizing are specific taxes? How pro-poor is government spending on education and health? The Georgetown Americas Institute was pleased to welcome Miguel Jaramillo, Nora Lustig, Claudiney Pereira, and Alejandro Werner to discuss fiscal redistribution in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Featuring
Miguel Jaramillo is an economist and a senior researcher at the Group for Analysis of Development (GRADE) in Lima, Peru. His research focuses on empirical labor economics, program evaluation, social policy analysis, and institutional economics. He has published extensively in these areas. He has been chairman of the Network on Inequality and Poverty (NIP) of the Latin American Economics Association (LACEA). He has also served in Peru’s public sector, having been vice minister of social promotion, as well as advisor at the ministry and vice-ministry levels. He was a member of the executive board of the National Industrial Training Service (SENATI) from 1997 to 2000, as well as president and founder of the National Training and Employment Promotion Fund (FONDOEMPLEO). He is a current member of Peru’s National Labor Council and elected president of the Peruvian Economics Association. Jaramillo holds a Ph.D from the University of California, San Diego and a bachelor’s degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru.
Nora Lustig is a resident fellow with the Georgetown Americas Institute and Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics at Tulane University, where she also founded and directs the Commitment to Equity Institute (CEQ). Additionally, she is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development, and the Inter-American Dialogue. Lustig’s research focuses on economic development, inequality, and social policies, particularly in Latin America. She is the editor of Commitment to Equity Handbook: Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty (2018), a guide to assessing the impact of taxation and social spending on inequality and poverty in developing countries. Lustig is a founding member and president emeritus of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) and was a co-director of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000, Attacking Poverty. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Inequality and is a member of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality’s Executive Council. Lustig served on the Atkinson Commission on Poverty, the High-Level Group on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress, and the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance. She received her doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Claudiney Pereira is a clinical professor in the Department of Economics at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. He is also a nonresident research associate of the Commitment to Equity Institute at Tulane University. His research has focused on fiscal policy effects on poverty and income distribution in Brazil and the empirics of monetary policy and the role of the financial sector in Brazil. He received his Ph.D in economics from North Carolina State University and has served as a faculty member of Tulane University and Catholic University of Brasilia and senior economic researcher and advisor at the National Confederation of the Industry in Brazil. He has also consulted with the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Center for Inter-American Policy and Research, and International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Alejandro Werner is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute. He recently completed almost nine years as director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that appointment, he was undersecretary of finance and public credit in Mexico’s Finance Ministry and held several positions in that ministry and the Central Bank. He also taught at leading universities in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in economics from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).