Latin America has been surprisingly spared from a generalized wave of corporate governance scandals. One possible explanation is that the region's level of investor protection is adequate. The evidence from the papers in this book says otherwise. The still relatively low level of protection and transparency has created an environment where problems cannot be easily detected or are not worth pursuing. These circumstances have started to push firms thirsty for capital to unilaterally opt for better corporate governance and alleviate this disadvantage. The papers in this book constitute the...

For almost as long as economics has been a profession, the role of natural resources in the promotion of economic growth has been among the core issues of development theory. Some newer theories suggest that natural riches produce institutional weaknesses as various social groups attempt to capture the economic rents derived from the exploitation of natural resources. Since the 1960s, some analysts have argued that resource-rich developing countries have grown more slowly than other developing countries. Nevertheless, we find ourselves in a time when conventional wisdom again postulates that...