Particularly timely in light of the recent Mexican peso crisis, Mobile Capital and Latin American Development examines the causes, consequences, and implications of the Latin American capital flight of the 1980s. It addresses the increasingly mobile and privatized nature of international capital and its power to shape economic policy in those countries.

Through a comparison of the policy experiences of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela, James E. Mahon finds that those countries that suffered the most capital flight had previously faced fewer...