Latin America's tepid economic growth limits its ability to address pressing social issues. What must be done to elevate its growth rate, resilience to future shocks and response to climate change? Three required measures are increased competition, improved capacity for firms to profit from this competition and fortified financial markets.
Currency board arrangements, under which domestic currency can be issued only to the extent that it is fully covered by the central bank's holdings of foreign exchange, were long generally dismissed as throwbacks to the colonial era. (See box for an explanation of what currency boards are and how they work.) It was argued that…