Marcelo Giugale

Fifteen years ago, Mexico did something that, until then, only rich countries had dared to do -- it began to transfer cash directly to its poor. The payments were conditional: the recipients had to help themselves by keeping their children in school and vaccinating them. Today, some 70 developing countries...

She was born in 1930. The child of poor European immigrants, she married the son of other poor European immigrants. They settled in one of Buenos Aires' many barrios, those aspiring working-class neighborhoods where the children of immigrants used to settle. A life as a housewife would follow: husband, kids,...

Case One. An African country spends four percent of its GDP every year paying for the gasoline consumed by its relatively few rich people. That would be enough money to double the budget for public education or triple the construction of hospitals -- all services mostly used by the poor....

It is accepted wisdom among economists that no country can out-compete China -- it will always be cheaper, faster and tougher than any other. No matter how technologically sophisticated a country's industries are, when their Chinese peers enter the market, they can out-price, out-speed and out-live anyone. If that's the...

Travel around Africa these days and you'll feel a sense of expectation, a sense that prosperity is just around the corner. High prices for -- and new discoveries of -- oil, gas and minerals are turning much of the continent into one giant boom town. Investors are snapping up assets...

Wouldn't you want to know how much money your government gets from the companies that exploit your country's oil, gas or minerals? It doesn't have to be exact, but a ball-park figure? And how about taking a peek at the contracts that your leaders sign on your behalf (remember, you...

You were a civil servant. You had four-week vacations, free health care and job security. You looked forward to retiring at fifty-something. And, like the rest of your countrymen, your family enjoyed services that were heavily subsidized -- from electricity to transport to college, you never paid the real cost...

The scene repeats itself daily. At a remote border crossing between two east African countries, a woman carrying an impossibly-heavy load of eggs on her back is harassed -- or worse -- by custom officials. She arrived on foot, and the eggs are the produce from her meager farm miles...

The evidence is as strong as it is puzzling: countries that have a lot of natural resources -- things like oil, gas and minerals -- tend to be poorer than those that don't. Over time, they grow slower, become less competitive and innovative, and suffer from more corruption and pollution....

The idea sounded good. Faced with competition from cheap imports, employers would ditch their prejudices and start hiring workers strictly for their skills -- irrespective of gender. Foreign investors would come in and set up corporations eager to recruit the best local talent, regardless of sex. They would bring with...

In the old times -- that's only ten years ago -- a federal minister of planning would sit in his office and single-handedly decide whether a road, port or power-plant would be built, as well as who would build it. Contracts would then be signed behind closed doors, bulldozers would...

Imagine an average developing country whose government decides to pay for the bus tickets of all its high-school students. If it can afford it, what would be wrong with that? It would make it easier for teenagers, especially those of modest means, to attend school and graduate. It would also...

How do you start up a country? Say that your province or region suddenly becomes an independent country -- with recognition from the United Nations and all. After the celebrations end, and the celebrities leave, the real decision-making begins. Will you have your own currency? What kind of taxes will...

If you cannot pay for your daughter's polio vaccination, should the government pay for it? How about if she had cancer and you cannot afford the treatment? And what if the terminally ill one was not your daughter but you? If you answered "yes" in any of those circumstances --...

A few weeks ago, this column argued that Africa is about to emerge -- and that you should think about investing there before it is too late. The reasons for the optimism go well beyond China's new role in the region, high commodity prices, and viral-expansion of cellular telephony --...

Imagine you are minister of finance in an average developing country. You survived the 2008-2009 global crisis, presided over more than five years of respectable economic growth, a boom in commodity prices fills your treasury with cash, and your central bank does not quite know how to keep your currency...

Don't you sometimes wish you had bought property in Moscow, Shanghai or Rio 10 years ago? You would have more than tripled your money. Well, 10 years from now, you will regret not having bought in Accra, Cape Town or Nairobi today. Sub-Saharan Africa -- "Africa," for short -- is...

Imagine you are invited to address an international gathering of "young leaders" -- those brilliant, world-travelled, multi-lingual twenty-somethings who graduate from top schools with top honors and -- having walked away from six-figure salaries -- work for almost nothing in NGOs. Their driving force is the "common good"-- that is,...

We see it today in the U.S. We saw it in India in 2010. In Mexico in 2007. And almost everywhere else in the past two decades. Around the world, comprehensive tax reform has been difficult -- if not impossible. Rich or poor, countries have rarely managed to clean up...

Back in the mid-1970s, a soap opera did what no one thought possible--it convinced Mexicans to have fewer babies. Within a few months of the daily airing of Acompáñame (Come Along With Me), Mexicans began to use contraceptives with gusto. Within five years, the rate of population growth slowed down...