In his latest book, Desigualdades: Por Qué Nos Beneficia Un País Más Igualitario (Inequalities: Why a More Equal Country Benefits All, 2022), Raymundo Campos Vazquez examines inequalities in Mexico through the lens of the economy, race, gender, and other key factors. He also explores how inequality impacts pervasive issues like obesity, the gender gap, and other disparities of modern society.
The Georgetown Americas Institute and the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias welcomed Campos to discuss his new book, economic injustice in Mexico, and the societal benefits of combating inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Campos was joined by discussants Nora Lustig of Tulane University and Alejandro Werner, GAI founding director.
This event was co-sponsored by the Georgetown Americas Institute and the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias.
This conversation took place in Spanish with English interpretation available.
Featuring
Raymundo Campos Vazquez is a professor at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. He has published in the American Economic Review, Oxford Development Studies, and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, among others. In 2018, he was recognized by the Mexican Academy of Sciences with the Research Award in Social Sciences. He has written books on social mobility in Mexico. His research has been cited by the Economist, New York Times, and El País, among others. Campos-Vazquez obtained his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009.
Nora Lustig is Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and the founding director of the Commitment to Equity Institute (CEQ) at Tulane University. She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Dialogue. Lustig’s research is on economic development, inequality and social policies with emphasis on Latin America. She is the editor of Commitment to Equity Handbook: Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty (2018), a step-by-step 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.
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 rose to undersecretary in Mexico’s Finance Ministry and taught at leading universities in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He earned his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994.