About the Authors

Fábio de Oliveira Barbosa is the secretary of the National Treasury in Brazil. Prior to assuming his current position in July 1999, he was the deputy secretary of the National Treasury from July 1995 to June 1999. Secretary Barbosa has had an extensive career in public service: he has served as special adviser to the minister of finance (March–July 1995); adviser to the executive director in the World Bank Group’s counsel of administration (November 1992–February 1995); general coordinator of fiscal policy in the Ministry of Finance’s Special Secretariat of Political Economy (March 1990–May 1991), among other positions. He holds a master’s degree in economic theory from the University of Brasília.

Carlos Boloña is president of the San Ignacio de Loyola University in Lima, Peru, and chairman of the Free Market Economy Institute in Lima. From 1991 to 1993, he served as Peru’s minister of economy and finance. Dr. Boloña chairs and serves on the boards of several private corporations in Peru and has been a consultant for the World Bank, USAID, and other organizations. He is the author of Cambio de Rumbo: un Programa Económico para los 90., a work detailing Peru’s economic reforms in the early 1990s. Dr. Boloña holds a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University.

Michael J. Chriszt is director of Latin America analysis at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. His primary responsibilities include monitoring and reporting on economic, financial, and political developments in foreign economies. His research interests include fiscal policy in Latin America and international lending arrangements. His work has appeared in various Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta publications, including the Economic Review. He holds a master’s degree in political science from Miami University in Ohio and has completed the management training program at Duke University.

Cláudia Costin served until recently as Brazil’s secretary of state for administration and government property and is now a private consultant on public sector reform issues. In the past she has served as Brazil’s minister of federal administration and state reform as well as director of planning and analysis for the economy ministry in Brazil. Dr. Costin also has extensive teaching experience at the University of Brasília and other institutions. She holds a doctorate from the School of Business Administration at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo.

Juan Carlos Echeverry-Garzón is director of the macroeconomic analysis unit in Colombia’s National Planning Department. Dr. Echeverry has extensive experience in Colombia’s central bank and has been a consultant with the Inter-American Development Bank. He has written widely on macroeconomic issues in Colombia, with a special emphasis on savings and inflation. Dr. Echeverry holds a Ph.D. in economics from New York University.

Robert A. Eisenbeis is senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, serving as chief adviser to the Bank president on monetary policy. Prior to joining the Bank, Dr. Eisenbeis was the Wachovia Professor of Banking at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His prior experience includes work with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. His work has appeared in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and the Journal of Regulatory Economics, among other publications. Dr. Eisenbeis holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Andrés Fontana is undersecretary of state for strategic policies with the Presidency of Argentina. His research interests include defense and international security issues. Dr. Fontana has held teaching positions at the University of Buenos Aires, the Catholic University of Córdoba, the Argentine Foreign Service Institute, and the University of North Carolina. He has been a fellow of the Social Science Research Council and of the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Fontana holds a Ph.D. in government from the University of Texas at Austin.

Francisco Gil-Díaz is chief executive officer of the telecommunications firm Avantel, a joint venture between the Mexican financial group Banamex Accival and MCI WorldCom. Dr. Gil-Díaz has been chief economist and deputy governor of the Bank of Mexico, as well as undersecretary of the Treasury in charge of tax policy and administration. The former chair of the economics department at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), he has published extensively on public finance, exchange rate policy, and macroeconomic management. Dr. Gil-Díaz holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

Lawrence S. Graham is director of the Brazil Center and professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. His interests lie in public policy and comparative politics, and his current research centers on customs administration along the U.S.-Mexican border as well as regional development policy in Europe and Latin America. Dr. Graham’s recent books include Politics and Government: A Brief Introduction and The Portuguese Military and the State: Rethinking Transitions in Europe and Latin America. Dr. Graham holds a Ph.D. from the University of Florida.

Jack Guynn is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. During his thirty-five year career with the Atlanta Fed, Mr. Guynn has held responsibilities for payments operations, bank supervision, lending, and human resources. As president, Mr. Guynn is responsible for all the Bank’s activities, including monetary policy, supervision and regulation, and operations. He also serves on the Federal Reserve System’s chief monetary policy body, the Federal Open Market Committee. Mr. Guynn earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and has completed management training programs at Harvard University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Ann Helwege is associate professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy at Tufts University. She also teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Dr. Helwege has written several books on major economic issues facing Latin America and on economic adjustment in Cuba in the aftermath of the Cold War. Her current research areas include poverty, economic stabilization, and environmental policy in Latin America. Dr. Helwege holds a B.A. in political science and a Ph.D. in economics from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Stephen Kay is an economic analyst with the Latin America Research Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Dr. Kay’s research interests include the politics of pension reform in Latin America. His work has appeared in Comparative Politics, the Journal of European Social Policy, and the Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. He has testified twice before committees in the U.S. House of Representatives as an expert witness. Prior to joining the Atlanta Fed research department, Dr. Kay taught at the California State University at Fullerton and the University of California at Los Angeles. Dr. Kay holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Elizabeth McQuerry is senior economic analyst with the Latin America Research Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Dr. McQuerry’s research interests include public sector reform and banking issues in Latin America, with a particular focus on Brazil. Her writing has appeared in the American Political Science Review, and her article “Banking Sector Rescue in Mexico” is in the third quarter 1999 issue of the Atlanta Fed’s Economic Review. Dr. McQuerry holds a Ph.D. in government from the University of Texas at Austin.

Verónica Navas-Ospina is a junior research economist in the macroeconomic analysis unit of Colombia’s National Planning Department. She received both B.A. and M.A. degrees in economics from the Andes University in Bogotá, Colombia. Her research interests include international economics, institutional economics and public sector reform.

Arturo C. Porzecanski is the New York–based managing director and Americas chief economist at ING Barings, the investment-banking arm of the ING Group, and the managing editor of the company’s flagship publication, the Emerging Markets Weekly Report. Prior to joining ING, he was the chief emerging markets economist at Kidder, Peabody & Co. and the chief economist at Republic National Bank of New York. He has also served as a long-time senior economist at J.P. Morgan & Co. Inc., a research economist at the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies in Mexico City, and a visiting economist at the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Porzecanski holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Ben Ross Schneider is associate professor in the political science department at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois, where he teaches courses in comparative politics, political economy, and Latin American politics. His current research interests include business politics in Latin America and administrative reform in developing countries. He is the author of Politics within the State: Elite Bureaucrats and Industrial Policy in Authoritarian Brazil. Dr. Schneider holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Graham Stock is vice president for international fixed-income research with Chase Securities Inc. in New York, where he has primary responsibility for economic and political analysis of Latin America. Previously, he was a senior economist for the Latin America team of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) as well as the EIU’s deputy director of forecasting. As a fellow of the Overseas Development Institute, Mr. Stock provided fiscal policy advisory services to the government of Papua, New Guinea. Mr. Stock earned an M.A. degree in development economics from the University of Manchester, England.

Kurt Weyland is assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and is currently a visiting scholar fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. His research interests include social policy, democracy, and economic reform in Latin America. Dr. Weyland is the author of Democracy Without Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil. His work has appeared in Comparative Politics, the Latin American Research Review, and other publications. Dr. Weyland holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.


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