Intervenant

Felipe LARRAIN BASCUNAN

Former Minister of Finance - Chile

From March 2010 to March 2014, Felipe Larraín Bascuñán was Chile´s Finance Minister in the Government of President Sebastián Piñera, and Vice President of Chile in February 2014. PhD (1985) and MA (1983) in Economics from Harvard University, and  BA in Economics from Universidad Católica de Chile (1981), he has a vast experience as an international consultant, academician, editor and author of 12 books and over 120 professional articles, both published in Latin America, U.S.A., Europe and Asia.

He is currently Director of the Latin American Center for Economic and Social Policies at Universidad Católica de Chile (CLAPES UC). Since 1996, he has been a Professor of Economics at Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, where he previously served as Associate and Assistant Professor. From 1997 to 2002 he was affiliated to Harvard University, first as the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies (1997-99), then as Faculty Fellow (1999-2002). Since 1985, he has served as economic advisor to several American governments, including Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Perú and Venezuela.

A consultant on macroeconomic issues to the United Nations, the World Bank, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and to a number of Latin American and U.S. companies, he has also been a board member of several companies and institutions in Chile, Latin America, the U.S. and Europe.

He is the editor and author of 12 books, including: Desarrollo Económico en Democracia: Proposiciones para una Sociedad Libre y Solidaria (Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile: Santiago, 1987); Debt, Adjustment and Recovery: Latin America’s Prospects for Growth and Development (Basil Blackwell: Oxford and New York, 1989); The Public Sector and the Latin American Crisis (ICS Press: San Francisco, 1991); Chile Hacia el 2000 (CEP: Santiago, Chile, 1994); La Transformación Económica de Chile (CEP: Santiago, Chile, 2000); Capital Flows, Capital Controls and Currency Crises: Latin America in the 1990s (University of Michigan Press,  2000); Economic Development in Central America, Vols I and II (Harvard University Press, 2001); Macroeconomics in Practice (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004), and Macroeconomics for Everyone (Pearson, 2011).

His book Macroeconomics in the Global Economy, co-authored with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, (Prentice Hall:New Jersey; Harvester Wheatsheaf:  London, 1993), has been translated into Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and is currently in its third edition.

Minister Larraín has received several awards and honors, including: best sovereign bond issue 2012-13, Latin Finance; Finance Minister of the Year 2010, Region of the Americas, awarded by The Banker magazine; Best Finance Minister 2010 of Latin America, awarded by América Economia; Economist of the Year, chosen by his peers through a survey made by Chilean Newspaper El Mercurio (Santiago, 2010); Finance Minister 2010 of Latin America, awarded by Emerging Markets (Washington, D.C.); Bicentennial Economist, presented by the Young Leaders Association (Santiago, 2010); Doctor Honoris Causa (2009) by the American University of Paraguay; Alumnae of the Year at the Faculty of Business and Economics of Universidad Católica (2002); Daniel Cosio Villegas award (1991), to one of the best three articles published in El Trimestre Económico during 1989-1990; an award from Magisterio Nacional Boliviano (1986) for a distinguished service as Economic Advisor to the President of Bolivia; Raúl Yver Oxley award (1980) to the best student in his class at Universidad Católica; Luis Cruz Martínez award (1976) to the student with the highest score of the Chilean universities admissions exam and the best high school transcript of Chile.

Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1958, he is married and the father of five children.