Rafael Correa: another Latin American president with an econ Ph.D.

Rafael Correa has been favored to become the next president of Ecuador, in the upcoming election, probably after a second-round run-off (See the Latin Americanist Blog for a brief). He is very likely to become another Latin American president with a Ph.D. degree in economics (e.g. Ernesto Zedillo, Mexican president 1994-2000, Ph.D. Yale '81)

He has been rumored to be a leftist and a close friend of Hugo Chavez. Nevertheless, as a U.S.-trained economist with a Ph.D degree in economics from the University of Illinois ('01), and a previous degree from Belgium, it is a neccesory strategy for him to campaign under an ultra-leftist and anti-West platform, otherwise other candidates from the far-left can easy attack him and alienate him based on his U.S. education background.

His former professor, Werner Baer, who is a Latin American expert, knows the trick very well: "My guess is that some of the posture he's taking now is because that's the way he hopes to get elected and win votes. Once in power, I doubt that he would be virulently anti-American like Chavez." He said Correa would more likely follow the lead of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who spooked investors with radical discourse as candidate, but once in office "became extremely orthodox in his economic policy."

In April 2005, Correa was appointed economy minister, but he was forced to resign after four months when he failed to consult the president before publicly lambasting the World Bank for denying Ecuador a $100 million loan. He now portrays himself as a “Christian leftist”, and concurs with Chavez’s attack of Bush by adding that "to call Mr. Bush the devil is an insult to the devil" and that “The devil is evil, but intelligent.”

This cheap talk is all understandable and predictable. Do you know of any other easier strategy that can help you accumulate political capital so fast in Latin America?

His professor Baer described Correa as a top-notch economist, which I would not agree.
At least his doctoral dissertation did not appear to confirm it. According to a self-description Correa made when he was still a Ph.D. student in University of Illinois (UIUC), his research was mediocre:

“My dissertation and research interests are Economic Development and International Economics. Specifically, the first part of my dissertation evaluates the effects of liberalization and globalization on the Latin-American economic growth, investment, and productivity. I am using state of the art techniques in instrumental variables and dynamic panel data models. The panel includes 19 Latin-American countries. The second part of the dissertation studies the economic desirability of a monetary union for the Andean countries. In this study, the basic techniques are vector auto-regressive models and disturbances orthogonalization. The third part of the dissertation is an evaluation of the impact of structural reforms on growth, human development and poverty in Latin America.”

However, he is certainly not a leftist! He is simply a political opportunist. We will see.

Comments

[bee]

Like all pols he is out for himself ... this makes him a prime example of economic man ... self-seeking with vile (Williamson)

[R-Squared]

Financial Times:
"However, many former associates say Mr Correa can be arrogant and snide. After a short stint as finance minister, he resigned last year - in part, because he brokered a $300m loan from Mr Chávez behind his own president's back. The refusal of any prominent indigenous leader to serve as his running-mate is also said to have been down to his conceitedness."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/23a5e4fa-5732-11db-9110-0000779e2340.html

[Matt Janovic]

Wise move putting the 'we shall see' at the end of the piece. You have to give the man a chance first, he's going to be better than the last bunch that were in there, I wager. That wouldn't be hard, either.

[Pablo Acosta]

How can you state that his dissertation is mediocre based on an abstract? Have you read it?

[Juan Jose Guevara]

About the comment Correa did about Bush he apologized in public. Actually, I think the rationale in this article is completely wrong. He actually lost the first round-up election because of his extreme and radical speeches specially against the United States. In the second round election he change his strategy into a softer, less radical speeches concentrating more in social problems and solutions rather than radical views. Look at the final numbers, it certainly worked

[Gloria Lloyd]

How do you ascertain that his economics work was mediocre? He certainly does not say that in the quote you attribute to him, and you don't say whether you actually read the work. His professor would know whether he was a great economist or not more than you would. There must be a reason Ecuador appointed him minister of economics. I doubt he's the only person from Ecuador who's gotten a degree in economics. If you make an accusation like that, you should support it with evidence for your own integrity. The University of Illinois is a top-notch research university; it would be assumed that those who have doctorates from it know what they're doing unless proven otherwise.

[R-Squared]

"How can you state that his dissertation is mediocre based on an abstract? "

The matter of fact is that, 90% of economics phds write mediocre thesis for their degree. It is not difficutlt to tell from the reseach questions he was taclking whehter he's potentially a first-class economist, from the academic perspective. When US universities recruit assistant professors, the decision whether to interview you at all in the ASSA meetings is based on reading the abstract of your job market paper. It has been proven to be very effective a screening device.

People write medicore thesis not because they are stupid, it is because not everyone wants to pursue an academic career (ie tenure-track professor positions) in top US research universities. If you want to pursue a policy career or to teach in a liberal arts college, then there is no need to work on frontieer research. The time is better spent in reading broadly, and acquire more applied skills (which are clearly demonstrated in the Rafael's doctoral thesis). According to a survey, 45% of economics phds never publish a single paper in their whole career, but they are not stupid. It is just a matter of choice, a career choice.

"Gloria Lloyd" asks a good question: "There must be a reason Ecuador appointed him minister of economics." Yes, there is a reason. The reason is that he is a very good policy economist, and I doubt that there is any correlation between being a good finance minister and being a good academic economist. I doubt that any of the Nobel Prize winners have the neccesory skills to qualify as a good finance minister. But similarly, it takes more than a UIUC degree to get employed in a top research university in the US. Doctoral eduction is very differnt from vocatinal schools: people enter it for different reasons and pursue different goals.

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