Across its 14 chapters, Capital Movements and Corporate Dominance in Latin America explores how the economic, financial and political integration of Latin America in the global economy has evolved during the recent decades, maintaining a model of uneven development dominated by developed countries, through a triad formed by their governments, bank and non-bank financial conglomerates, and non-financial conglomerates. Sometimes implicitly, at other times directly addressing contemporary debates, this comprehensive collection challenges, from many viewpoints, mainstream economics, assessing the outcomes of its policy prescriptions and offering a broader and more complete picture of the complex development of Latin America.
This collection of essays has the merit of presenting well-known arguments made by senior scholars alongside more recent developments in heterodox economic thinking, organised in three distinct parts: the first part concentrates on post-crisis new capital movement trends and explores the uneven effects of capital movement in developed, emerging and developing countries; the second part focuses on non-financial corporations and economic growth; and the third part deals with capital movements and economic patterns.
The collection opens with a truly interdisciplinary chapter by Gary Dymski and Nicole Cerpa Vielma which, by demonstrating the need to consider space alongside time, is an open invitation to push the methodological boundaries of heterodox economics. The second chapter by Jan Toporowski proposes an understanding of how financial crises have been channelled to developing and emerging countries through complex mechanisms via financial, monetary and trade channels. The chapter engages with a more recent development of the idea of the hierarchical and structured nature of the international financial and monetary system that is covered in Chapter 4: Toporowski argues that the dollar is superior not because it has an intrinsic value but because it is the domestic currency of US corporate hegemony.
The third chapter is very relevant as it addresses foreign direct investment (FDI) and its effect on inequality and macroeconomic instability on the eve of the COVID-19 crisis arguing that, since the previous crisis, rising FDI (relative to gross domestic product, GDP) has not helped to reduce global inequality.
In Chapter 4 Jennifer Churchill, Bruno Bonizzi and Annina Kaltenbrunner skilfully explore the emerging experiences in both Asia and Latin America with respect to two intertwined policy debates, namely the push for local currency bond markets development and the need for participation in these markets by institutional investors – and pension funds in this particular case. The derived policy perspectives and the detail of the analysis make this chapter an outstandingly relevant contribution to the volume, both empirically and theoretically
Chapter 5 addresses the issue of dividend distribution by foreign banks operating in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. Here, Mimoza Shabani considers that the repatriation of profits is not only an outflow of funds, but that it also disadvantages the host country inasmuch it affects the future investment in, and the continuous contribution to, the economy in which the bank operates. Her analysis suggests that the dividend repatriation is procyclical.
In concluding this first part, Noemi Levy-Orlik and Jorge Alonso Bustamante-Torres (Chapter 6) provide an analysis of FDI and its impact on the industrial development of selected countries arguing that the overcapitalisation process of Latin American non-financial corporations is different from that implemented by multinational corporations based in developed countries, since, for the former, the financial gains provided by their cash management were not as effective as those of multinationals in developed countries.
Chapter 7 opens the second part of this collection. Esteban Pérez-Caldentey and Nicole Favreau-Negront show how international bond-issuing firms use liquidity or play in the international bond market to shore up their balance sheets rather than to finance investment. The authors note how, theoretically, mainstream economics is ill equipped to tackle this issue. This is because of the need to integrate financial and real factors as well as microeconomic and macroeconomic dimensions. In their focus on capital flows and their macroeconomic implications in Chile, where both financial and real flows are highly concentrated, the authors emphasise the need for sectoral analysis as the appropriate method for understanding certain mechanisms.
Skilfully positioned right after, Chapter 8 by Samuel Ortiz-Velásquez concentrates on the Mexican steel industry. The chapter is an interesting analysis of the strategic potential of industrial policy in the steel industry in Mexico. The chapter concludes with a toolkit for the correct design of industrial policy aimed at promoting investment.
In Chapter 9, Ximena Echenique-Romero addresses excess international liquidity and corporate financing in Mexico through the prism of the United States’ policy of quantitative easing. She examines corporate refinancing in Mexico, the effect of European Union and US international liquidity, and the link between corporate financing and the stock market. The last chapter of this section, presented by Marcelo Varela-Enríquez and Gustavo Adrián Salazar, provides an overview of FDI in Latin America and its effects on growth and development in the period 1996 to 2017. They find that FDI has contributed positively to economic growth in terms of changes to GDP, but that the openness of these economies has negatively affected human development.
Chapter 11 opens the final part of this collection and focuses on Latin America's international integration and global value chains after the 2008 global financial crisis. Juan Pablo Painceira and Alexis Saludjian compare and contrast the developmental strategies of the United States and the European Union versus Latin America, particularly Brazil: while industrial countries moved towards protectionism, developing economies have continued to support trade openness. This affected the strategies of multinational corporations and China's role in the world economy.
In the next chapter Cecilia Allami, Pablo Bortz and Alan Cibils illustrate how the new macroeconomic policy implemented in Argentina in 2015–19 failed to create investment, aggravating structural external imbalances while short-term portfolio investment took place. As a result, Argentina had to resort to a rescue plan.
In the next interdisciplinary chapter Gonzalo Cómbita-Mora and Álvaro Martín Moreno-Rivas discuss the Colombian economy and how it consolidated a productive structure in which mining and energy dominated by multinational corporations and national corporations in the agro-industrial sectors displaced Afro-descendants, Indians and peasants, thereby intensifying the country's armed conflict.
In the final chapter primary sectors are considered: Alejandro Garay-Huamán analyses the social economic impact of transnational capital and its connection to the non-capitalist sector through global chains of production. The chapter presents an impressive conceptualisation of the complex relationship between transnational corporations, the financial sector, workers in the extractive sectors and peasants within global production chains of gold, silver and copper.
Overall, this collection represents a wealth of interdisciplinary analysis and an overview of the recent evolution of specific aspects of Latin America's current integration into the global economy. The editors skilfully introduce the complex themes addressed by the authors, spanning the entire region and involving various sectors. The volume is also interesting for its methodological variety. This collection of essays is a must-read for those who are interested in the recent evolution of the region and are unconvinced by the narrative provided by mainstream economics.
