Economic Policies in Latin America and the Transition Economies. Different patterns of the Washington Consensus approach application, and their effects on material domestic extraction rates

Abstract

Has the increase in Gini's coefficient and therefore inequality led to a parallel increase in the domestic extraction and Material Consumption Rates in Latin America and the EBRD region? Or is there a proportional relationship between the Gini coefficient and the resource extraction rates in these regions? Economic growth is considered a fundamental condition for human development. However, economic activities are often accompanied by environmental hazards: climate change problems, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, are phenomena directly linked to the scale of use of materials. The economic policies suggested by the main international institutions (IMF, WB, OECD, EBRD, UNCTAD) have driven the so-called globalization phenomenon in the last few decades, which seeks to exploit the comparative advantages between countries. This article proposes an analysis of the extraction rates of materials, in two regions of the world where the financing conditions of the IMF and WB were applied, with the aim of supporting economic growth. The hyper-liberalization policies applied in the countries of Latin America since the 1980s have been replicated very similarly in the countries considered in transition to the market economy in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.