Hernando de Soto (economist)
Encyclopedia
Hernando de Soto is a Peruvian economist
known for his work on the informal economy
and on the importance of business and property rights. He is the president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy
(ILD), located in Lima
, Peru.
, Peru. His father was a Peruvian diplomat. After the 1948 military coup in Peru, his father chose exile in Europe, taking his wife and two young sons with him. De Soto was educated in Switzerland, where he did post-graduate work at the Graduate Institute of International Studies
in Geneva
. He later worked as an economist, corporate executive and consultant. He returned to Peru at the age of 38. His younger brother Álvaro
served in the Peruvian diplomatic corps in Lima, New York and Geneva and was seconded to United Nations
in 1982; he retired from the U.N. in 2007 with the title of Assistant Secretary General. He is very well known as an international adviser.
(ILD) were responsible for some four hundred initiatives, laws, and regulations that changed Peru's economic system
.
In particular, ILD designed the administrative reform of Peru's property system which has given titles to more than 1.2 million families and helped some 380,000 firms which previously operated in the black market to enter the formal economy
. This latter task was accomplished through the elimination of bureaucratic "red-tape" and restrictive registration, licensing and permit laws that made the opening of new businesses very time-consuming and costly.
University of Chicago
political scientist Susan C. Stokes believes that de Soto's influence helped change the policies of the recently elected Alberto Fujimori
from a Keynesian to a neoliberal approach. De Soto convinced then-president Fujimori to travel to Chicago, Illinois, where Fujimori met with several important figures within the International Monetary Fund
, the US Department of State, and the Chinese
embassy, who convinced him that he had to abide by the rules set by the international financial institutions. These policies led to a reduction in the rate of inflation
.
The Cato Institute
and The Economist
magazine have argued that de Soto's policy prescriptions brought him into conflict with and eventually helped to undermine the Shining Path
guerrilla movement. By granting titles to small coca
farmers in the two main coca-growing areas, he deprived the Shining Path of safe haven, recruits and money, they have argued, and the leadership was forced to cities where they were arrested. ILD notes a large terrorist attack on de Soto and statements by Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman
who saw ILD as a serious threat.
After the split with Fujimori, he and his institute designed similar programs in El Salvador
, Haiti
, Tanzania
, and Egypt
, and has gained favor with the World Bank
, the World Bank allied international NGO Slum Dwellers International
and the government of South Africa
.
Since its work in Peru in the 1980s, his institute, the ILD, has worked in 23 countries. Heads of state in 35 countries have sought the ILD's services, and ILD staff has personally met with 29 of them to discuss precisely what the ILD might do to help their economies prosper.
The impact of de Soto's institute in the field of development –on political leaders, experts and multi-lateral organizations– has been widespread and acknowledged. For example:
In 2009, the ILD turned its attention back to Peru and the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon jungle. In response to Peruvian President García's call to all Peruvians to present their proposals toward solving the problems leading to the bloody incidents in Bagua, the ILD has assessed the situation and presented its preliminary findings. ILD has published a short videotaped documentary, The Mystery of Capital among the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon, summarizing its findings from indigenous communities in Alaska, Canada and the Peruvian jungle.
without adequate participation in an information framework that records ownership of property and other economic information. Unreported, unrecorded economic activity results in many small entrepreneurs who lack legal ownership of their property, making it difficult for them to obtain credit, sell the business, or expand. They cannot seek legal remedies to business conflicts in court, since they do not have legal ownership. Lack of information on income prevents governments from collecting taxes and acting for the public welfare. "The existence of such massive exclusion generates two parallel economies, legal and extra legal. An elite minority enjoys the economic benefits of the law and globalization, while the majority of entrepreneurs are stuck in poverty, where their assets –adding up to more than US$ 10 trillion worldwide– languish as dead capital
in the shadows of the law." To survive, to protect their assets, and to do as much business as possible, the extra legals create their own rules. But because these local arrangements are full of shortcomings and are not easily enforceable, the extralegals also create their own social, political and economic problems that affect the society at large.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall
, responsible nations around the developing world have worked hard to make the transition
to a market economy, but have in general failed. Populist leaders have used this failure of the free market system to wipe out poverty in the developing world to beat their "anti-globalization" drums. But the ILD believes that the real enemy is within the flawed legal systems of developing nations that make it virtually impossible for the majority of their people –and their assets– to gain a stake in the market. The people of these countries have talent, enthusiasm, and an astonishing ability to wring a profit
out of practically nothing.
What the poor majority in the developing world do not have, is easy access to the legal system, which, in the advanced nations of the world and for the elite in their own countries, is the gateway to economic success. For it is in the legal system where property documents are created and standardized according to law. That documentation builds a public memory that permits society to engage in such crucial economic activities as identifying and gaining access to information about individuals, their assets, their titles, rights, charges and obligations; establishing the limits of liability for businesses; knowing an asset's previous economic situation; assuring protection of third parties; and quantifying and valuing assets and rights. These public memory mechanisms in turn facilitate such opportunities as access to credit, the establishment of systems of identification, the creation of systems for credit and insurance information, the provision for housing and infrastructure, the issue of shares, the mortgage of property, and a host of other economic activities that drive a modern market economy."
chose de Soto as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special May 1999 issue Leaders of the New Millennium, and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. De Soto was also listed as one of the 15 innovators "who will reinvent your future" according to Forbes
magazine's 85th anniversary edition. In January 2000, Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, the German development magazine, described de Soto as one of the most important development theoreticians of the last millennium. In October 2005, over 20,000 readers of Prospect magazine
of the UK and Foreign Policy
magazine of the U.S. ranked him as number 13 on the magazines’ joint survey of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll.
U.S. presidents from both major parties have praised de Soto's work. Bill Clinton
, for example, called him "The world's greatest living economist", George H. W. Bush
declared that "De Soto's prescription offers a clear and promising alternative to economic stagnation…" Bush's predecessor, Ronald Reagan
said, "De Soto and his colleagues have examined the only ladder for upward mobility. The free market
is the other path to development and the one true path. It is the people's path… it leads somewhere. It works." His work has also received praise from two United Nations
Secretaries-General Kofi Annan
—"Hernando de Soto is absolutely right, that we need to rethink how we capture economic growth and development"—and Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
—"A crucial contribution. A new proposal for change that is valid for the whole world."
. The World Justice Project
works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law
for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.
In his 'Planet of Slums' Mike Davis
argues that De Soto, who Davis calls 'the global guru of neo-liberal populism', is essentially promoting what the statist left in South America and India has always promoted - individual land titling
. Davis argues that titling is incorporation into the formal economy of cities which benefits more wealthy squatters but is disastrous for poorer squatters, and especially tenants who simply cannot afford incorporation into the fully commodified formal economy.
Grassroots controlled and directed shack dwellers movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo
in South Africa
and the Homeless Workers' Movement
(MTST) in Brazil have strenuously argued against individual titling and for communal and democratic systems of collective land tenure because this offers protection to the poorest and prevents 'downward raiding' in which richer people displace squatters once their neighborhoods are formalized.
An article by Madeleine Bunting
for The Guardian
(UK) claimed that de Soto's work was helpful to the Third Way
political movement – an association that Bunting claimed would not fundamentally challenge world power structures. Reporter John Gravois also criticized de Soto for his ties to power circles, exemplified by his attendance at the Davos
World Economic Forum
. In response, de Soto told Gravois that this proximity to power would help de Soto educate the elites about poverty. Ivan Osorio
of the Competitive Enterprise Institute
has refuted Gravois's allegations pointing out how Gravois has misinterpreted many of de Soto's recommendations.
Robert J. Samuelson
has argued against what he sees as de Soto's "single bullet" approach and has argued for a greater emphasis on culture
and how local conditions affect people's perceptions of their opportunities. The risk that titling will undermine customary forms of tenure and insufficiently protect the rights of land users that depend on the commons, as well as the fear that titling schemes may lead to further reconcentration of land ownership unless strong support is provided to smallholders, has also led the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, to question the insistence on titling as a means to protect security of tenure : while security of tenure matters, he stated in a report to the UN General Assembly presented in October 2010, this should be achieved by registering the rights of landusers and by the adoption of anti-eviction and tenancy laws, rather than by promoting the creation of a market for land rights that could in fact lead to deprive the poor, priced out from such markets, from access to land.
In the World Development
journal, a 1990 article by R. G. Rossini and J. J. Thomas of the London School of Economics
questioned the statistical basis of de Soto's claims about the size of the informal economy in his first book The Other Path. However, the ILD pointed out, in the same journal, that Rossini and Thomas’ observations "neither [addressed] the central theme of the book, nor [did it address] the main body of quantitative evidence displayed to substantiate the importance of economic and legal barriers that give rise to informal activities. Instead, [they focused] exclusively on four empirical estimates that the book [mentioned] only in passing".
In the Journal of Economic Literature
, Christopher Woodruff of the University of California, San Diego
criticized de Soto for overestimating the amount of wealth that land titling now informally owned property could unlock, and argues that "de Soto's own experience in Peru suggests that land titling by itself is not likely to have much effect. Titling must be followed by a series of politically challenging steps. Improving the efficiency of judicial systems, rewriting bankruptcy codes, restructuring financial market regulations, and similar reforms will involve much more difficult choices by policymakers.
"
This criticism is viewed by some to misjudge de Soto's official opinion. His book Mystery of Capital devotes the majority of its contents to the theory that legal reform is by far the most significant element of property reform.
Roy Culpepper notes that it is often very difficult to establish who owns what among the poor. He also notes that the titling is biased against those who are completely landless and propertyless.
Alan Gilbert finds that in Bogotá
, for example, giving legal titles has not created a better housing market or better supply of credit for the poor.
Legal scholar Jonathan Manders has argued that de Soto's vision of property rights reform is the correct one, but that the sequencing of proposed reforms will affect their sustainability over the long term.
Empirical studies by Argentine economists Sebastian Galiani and Ernesto Schargrodsky have taken issue with de Soto's link between titling and the increase in credit to the poor, but have also pointed out that families with titles "substantially increased housing investment, reduced household size, and improved the education of their children relative to the control group". A study commissioned by DFID, an agency of the U.K. government, further summarized many of the complications arising from implementing de Soto's policy recommendations when insufficient attention is paid to the local social context.
There are many explanations regarding how and what in capitalism causes growth, according to de Soto. In an interview with The Economist, he emphasizes the primary role of institutions, and points to successful examples of now-developed countries that reformed their legal system in defense of his property rights-oriented policy recommendations. De Soto's conclusions have inspired other work on microcredit, and the importance of property and business rights. For instance, the World Bank's popular "Doing Business" series (launched in 2004) that provides data for over 175 countries worldwide on opening and closing businesses, obtaining credit, labor laws, and fulfilling contract and property rights, was inspired by the ILD's work in Peru and elsewhere.
De Soto himself has often pointed out that his critics mistakenly claim that he advocates land titling by itself as sufficient for effective development: For example, in the ILD's new brochure he is quoted as saying, "The ILD is not just about titling. What we do is help Governments build a system of public memory that legally identifies all their people, their assets, their business records and their transactions in such a way that they can unleash their economic potential. No economy can develop and prosper without the benefits that clearly registered public documents bestow."
The original Spanish-language
title of The Other Path is El Otro Sendero, an allusion to de Soto's alternative proposals for development in Peru, countering the attempts of Peru's "Shining Path
" ("Sendero Luminoso") to win the support of Peru's poor. Based on five years worth of ILD research into the causes of massive informality and legal exclusion in Peru, the book was also a direct intellectual challenge to the Shining Path, offering to the poor of Peru not the violent overthrow of the system but "the other path" out of poverty, through legal reform. In response, the Senderistas added de Soto to their assassination list, In July 1992, the terrorists sent a second car bomb into ILD headquarters in Lima, killing 3 and wounding 19.
In addition, he has written, with Francis Cheneval, Swiss Human Rights Book Volume 1: Realizing Property Rights, published in 2006 – a collection of papers presented at an International Symposium in Switzerland in 2006 on the urgency of property rights in impoverished countries for small business owners, women and other fragile human groups, such as the poor and political refugees. The book includes a paper on the ILD's work in Tanzania delivered by Hernando de Soto.
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
known for his work on the informal economy
Informal economy
The informal sector or informal economy as defined by governments, scholars, banks, etc. is the part of an economy that is not taxed, monitored by any form of government, or included in any gross national product , unlike the formal economy....
and on the importance of business and property rights. He is the president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy
Institute for Liberty and Democracy
The Institute for Liberty and Democracy is a Lima-based think tank devoted to the promotion of property rights in developing countries...
(ILD), located in Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, Peru.
Childhood and education
Hernando de Soto was born in 1941 in ArequipaArequipa
Arequipa is the capital city of the Arequipa Region in southern Peru. With a population of 836,859 it is the second most populous city of the country...
, Peru. His father was a Peruvian diplomat. After the 1948 military coup in Peru, his father chose exile in Europe, taking his wife and two young sons with him. De Soto was educated in Switzerland, where he did post-graduate work at the Graduate Institute of International Studies
Graduate Institute of International Studies
The Graduate Institute of International Studies, best known as HEI , was founded in 1927 as one of the first institutions in the world dedicated to the study of international relations...
in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
. He later worked as an economist, corporate executive and consultant. He returned to Peru at the age of 38. His younger brother Álvaro
Álvaro de Soto
Álvaro de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat. He ended a 25 year career with the United Nations in May 2007.-Early years:De Soto studied law and international relations in Lima and Geneva prior to enlisting in his country's diplomatic corps...
served in the Peruvian diplomatic corps in Lima, New York and Geneva and was seconded to United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
in 1982; he retired from the U.N. in 2007 with the title of Assistant Secretary General. He is very well known as an international adviser.
Reforms in Peru and elsewhere
Between 1988 and 1995, he and the Institute for Liberty and DemocracyInstitute for Liberty and Democracy
The Institute for Liberty and Democracy is a Lima-based think tank devoted to the promotion of property rights in developing countries...
(ILD) were responsible for some four hundred initiatives, laws, and regulations that changed Peru's economic system
Economic system
An economic system is the combination of the various agencies, entities that provide the economic structure that defines the social community. These agencies are joined by lines of trade and exchange along which goods, money etc. are continuously flowing. An example of such a system for a closed...
.
In particular, ILD designed the administrative reform of Peru's property system which has given titles to more than 1.2 million families and helped some 380,000 firms which previously operated in the black market to enter the formal economy
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
. This latter task was accomplished through the elimination of bureaucratic "red-tape" and restrictive registration, licensing and permit laws that made the opening of new businesses very time-consuming and costly.
University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
political scientist Susan C. Stokes believes that de Soto's influence helped change the policies of the recently elected Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori Fujimori served as President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 17 November 2000. A controversial figure, Fujimori has been credited with the creation of Fujimorism, uprooting terrorism in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic stability, though his methods have drawn charges of...
from a Keynesian to a neoliberal approach. De Soto convinced then-president Fujimori to travel to Chicago, Illinois, where Fujimori met with several important figures within the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
, the US Department of State, and the Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
embassy, who convinced him that he had to abide by the rules set by the international financial institutions. These policies led to a reduction in the rate of inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
.
The Cato Institute
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...
and The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
magazine have argued that de Soto's policy prescriptions brought him into conflict with and eventually helped to undermine the Shining Path
Shining Path
Shining Path is a Maoist guerrilla terrorist organization in Peru. The group never refers to itself as "Shining Path", and as several other Peruvian groups, prefers to be called the "Communist Party of Peru" or "PCP-SL" in short...
guerrilla movement. By granting titles to small coca
Coca
Coca, Erythroxylum coca, is a plant in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. The plant plays a significant role in many traditional Andean cultures...
farmers in the two main coca-growing areas, he deprived the Shining Path of safe haven, recruits and money, they have argued, and the leadership was forced to cities where they were arrested. ILD notes a large terrorist attack on de Soto and statements by Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman
Abimael Guzmán
Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso , also known by the nom de guerre Presidente Gonzalo , a former professor of philosophy, was the leader of the Shining Path during the Maoist insurgency known as the internal conflict in Peru...
who saw ILD as a serious threat.
After the split with Fujimori, he and his institute designed similar programs in El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
, Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
, and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, and has gained favor with the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
, the World Bank allied international NGO Slum Dwellers International
Slum Dwellers International
Slum Dwellers International is a global non-governmental organization that manages networks of the urban poor and slum dwellers that are organised into federations and which are usually based in the Global South. Its funders include the World Bank, USAID and the Gates Foundation.SDI argue that...
and the government of South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
.
Since its work in Peru in the 1980s, his institute, the ILD, has worked in 23 countries. Heads of state in 35 countries have sought the ILD's services, and ILD staff has personally met with 29 of them to discuss precisely what the ILD might do to help their economies prosper.
The impact of de Soto's institute in the field of development –on political leaders, experts and multi-lateral organizations– has been widespread and acknowledged. For example:
- The ILD's Institutional reform Program has attracted the interest of strategically key nations concerned with internal conflict and terrorism.
- The ILD has designed successful reforms that have inspired major initiatives in former client countries, such as Egypt, the Philippines, Honduras, and Tanzania.
- The ILD's influence and ideas have also inspired reforms in countries where it has yet to work, such as China, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, and India, which includes two of the world's fastest growing emerging economies.
- The ILD is recognized as the world authority in understanding extralegal economies, influencing the protocols of large multilateral organizations by helping them to understand the realities that the poor and the excluded face, day to day. These include institutions such as the Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), USAID and the World Bank.
In 2009, the ILD turned its attention back to Peru and the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon jungle. In response to Peruvian President García's call to all Peruvians to present their proposals toward solving the problems leading to the bloody incidents in Bagua, the ILD has assessed the situation and presented its preliminary findings. ILD has published a short videotaped documentary, The Mystery of Capital among the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon, summarizing its findings from indigenous communities in Alaska, Canada and the Peruvian jungle.
Main thesis
The main message of de Soto's work and writings is that no nation can have a strong market economyMarket economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
without adequate participation in an information framework that records ownership of property and other economic information. Unreported, unrecorded economic activity results in many small entrepreneurs who lack legal ownership of their property, making it difficult for them to obtain credit, sell the business, or expand. They cannot seek legal remedies to business conflicts in court, since they do not have legal ownership. Lack of information on income prevents governments from collecting taxes and acting for the public welfare. "The existence of such massive exclusion generates two parallel economies, legal and extra legal. An elite minority enjoys the economic benefits of the law and globalization, while the majority of entrepreneurs are stuck in poverty, where their assets –adding up to more than US$ 10 trillion worldwide– languish as dead capital
Dead capital
Dead capital is an economic term related to property which is informally held that it is not legally recognized. The uncertainty of ownership decreases the value of the asset and/or the ability to lend or borrow against it...
in the shadows of the law." To survive, to protect their assets, and to do as much business as possible, the extra legals create their own rules. But because these local arrangements are full of shortcomings and are not easily enforceable, the extralegals also create their own social, political and economic problems that affect the society at large.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
, responsible nations around the developing world have worked hard to make the transition
Transition economy
A transition economy or transitional economy is an economy which is changing from a centrally planned economy to a free market. Transition economies undergo economic liberalization, where market forces set prices rather than a central planning organization and trade barriers are removed,...
to a market economy, but have in general failed. Populist leaders have used this failure of the free market system to wipe out poverty in the developing world to beat their "anti-globalization" drums. But the ILD believes that the real enemy is within the flawed legal systems of developing nations that make it virtually impossible for the majority of their people –and their assets– to gain a stake in the market. The people of these countries have talent, enthusiasm, and an astonishing ability to wring a profit
Profit (accounting)
In accounting, profit can be considered to be the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market whatever it is that is accounted as an enterprise in terms of the component costs of delivered goods and/or services and any operating or other expenses.-Definition:There are...
out of practically nothing.
What the poor majority in the developing world do not have, is easy access to the legal system, which, in the advanced nations of the world and for the elite in their own countries, is the gateway to economic success. For it is in the legal system where property documents are created and standardized according to law. That documentation builds a public memory that permits society to engage in such crucial economic activities as identifying and gaining access to information about individuals, their assets, their titles, rights, charges and obligations; establishing the limits of liability for businesses; knowing an asset's previous economic situation; assuring protection of third parties; and quantifying and valuing assets and rights. These public memory mechanisms in turn facilitate such opportunities as access to credit, the establishment of systems of identification, the creation of systems for credit and insurance information, the provision for housing and infrastructure, the issue of shares, the mortgage of property, and a host of other economic activities that drive a modern market economy."
Praise for work
Time magazineTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
chose de Soto as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special May 1999 issue Leaders of the New Millennium, and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. De Soto was also listed as one of the 15 innovators "who will reinvent your future" according to Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
magazine's 85th anniversary edition. In January 2000, Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, the German development magazine, described de Soto as one of the most important development theoreticians of the last millennium. In October 2005, over 20,000 readers of Prospect magazine
Prospect (magazine)
Prospect is a monthly British general interest magazine, specialising in politics and current affairs. Frequent topics include British, European, and US politics, social issues, art, literature, cinema, science, the media, history, philosophy, and psychology...
of the UK and Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...
magazine of the U.S. ranked him as number 13 on the magazines’ joint survey of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll.
U.S. presidents from both major parties have praised de Soto's work. Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, for example, called him "The world's greatest living economist", George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
declared that "De Soto's prescription offers a clear and promising alternative to economic stagnation…" Bush's predecessor, Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
said, "De Soto and his colleagues have examined the only ladder for upward mobility. The free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
is the other path to development and the one true path. It is the people's path… it leads somewhere. It works." His work has also received praise from two United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Secretaries-General Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
—"Hernando de Soto is absolutely right, that we need to rethink how we capture economic growth and development"—and Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar y de la Guerra is a Peruvian diplomat who served as the fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1, 1982 to December 31, 1991. He studied in Colegio San Agustín of Lima, and then at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In 1995, he ran unsuccessfully...
—"A crucial contribution. A new proposal for change that is valid for the whole world."
Prizes
Among the prizes he has received are:- The Freedom Prize (Switzerland)
- The Fisher Prize (United Kingdom)
- 2002
- the Goldwater Award (USA)
- Adam Smith Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education (USA)
- The CARE Canada Award for Outstanding Development Thinking (Canada)
- 2003
- received the Downey Fellowship at Yale University
- the Democracy Hall of Fame International Award from the National Graduate University (USA)
- 2004
- the Templeton Freedom Prize (USA)
- the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing LibertyCato InstituteThe Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...
(USA) - the Royal Decoration of the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn, 5th Class, (Thailand)
- 2005
- an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Buckingham (United Kingdom),
- The Americas Award (USA)
- named the Most Outstanding of 2004 for Economic Development at Home and Abroad by the Peruvian National Assembly of Rectors
- received the Prize of Deutsche Stiftung Eigentum for exceptional contributions to the theory of property rights
- the 2004 IPAE Award by the Peruvian Institute of Business Administration
- the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award 2005 (USA) in tribute to his outstanding accomplishments
- the BearingPoint, Forbes magazine's seventh Compass Award for Strategic Direction
- was named as a "Fellow of the Class of 1930" by Dartmouth College.
- 2006
- the 2006 Bradley Prize for outstanding achievement by the Bradley Foundation.
- the 2006 Innovation Award (Social and Economic Innovation) from The Economist magazine (December 2, 2006) for the promotion of property rights and economic development.
- 2007
- The Poder BCG Business Awards 2007, granted by Poder Magazine and the Boston Consulting Group, for the "Best Anti-Poverty Initiative"
- the anthology Die Zwölf Wichtigsten Ökonomen der Welt (The World's Twelve Most Influential Economists, 2007), included a profile of de Soto among a list that begins with Adam Smith and includes such recent winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics as Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen.
- the 2007 Humanitarian Award in recognition of his work to help poor people participate in the market economy.
- 2009
- Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College (Ireland) for having excelled in public life and made a worthy contribution to society.
- the inaugural Hernando de Soto Award for Democracy awarded by the Center for International Private EnterpriseCenter for International Private EnterpriseThe Center for International Private Enterprise is one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy and a non-profit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.- About :...
(CIPE) in recognition of his extraordinary achievements in furthering economic freedom in Peru and throughout the developing world.
- 2010
- the Hayek Medal for his theories on liberal development policy ("market economy from below") and for the appropriate implementation of his concepts by two Peruvian presidents.
- the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Cabinet (Council of Ministers) in recognition of his contribution toward the betterment of humankind and having worked for the future of the earth through his commitment.
World Justice Project
Hernando de Soto serves as an Honorary Co-Chair for the World Justice ProjectWorld Justice Project
-Mainstreaming:The World Justice Project holds action-oriented meetings with leaders from a range of fields to mainstream rule of law advancement and make strengthening the rule of law as fundamental to the thinking and work of all professionals as it is to lawyers...
. The World Justice Project
World Justice Project
-Mainstreaming:The World Justice Project holds action-oriented meetings with leaders from a range of fields to mainstream rule of law advancement and make strengthening the rule of law as fundamental to the thinking and work of all professionals as it is to lawyers...
works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law
Rule of law
The rule of law, sometimes called supremacy of law, is a legal maxim that says that governmental decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws with minimal discretion in their application...
for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.
Criticism and response
De Soto has been criticized by some academics for methodological and analytical reasons, while some activists have criticized de Soto for being a representative figure of the movement for prioritizing property rights.In his 'Planet of Slums' Mike Davis
Mike Davis (scholar)
Mike Davis is an American Marxist social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California.-Life:...
argues that De Soto, who Davis calls 'the global guru of neo-liberal populism', is essentially promoting what the statist left in South America and India has always promoted - individual land titling
Land titling
Land titling is a form of land reform in which private individuals and families are given formal property rights for land which they have previously occupied informally or used on the basis of customary land tenure...
. Davis argues that titling is incorporation into the formal economy of cities which benefits more wealthy squatters but is disastrous for poorer squatters, and especially tenants who simply cannot afford incorporation into the fully commodified formal economy.
Grassroots controlled and directed shack dwellers movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo
Abahlali baseMjondolo
Abahlali baseMjondolo , also known as AbM or the red shirts is a shack-dwellers' movement in South Africa which is well known for its campaigning for public housing. The movement grew out of a road blockade organized from the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the city of Durban in early 2005 and now...
in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and the Homeless Workers' Movement
Homeless Workers' Movement
The Homeless Workers Movement is a shack-dwellers' movement in Brazil. It originated from the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in 1997...
(MTST) in Brazil have strenuously argued against individual titling and for communal and democratic systems of collective land tenure because this offers protection to the poorest and prevents 'downward raiding' in which richer people displace squatters once their neighborhoods are formalized.
An article by Madeleine Bunting
Madeleine Bunting
Madeleine Bunting is an English journalist and writer who is an Associate Editor and columnist on The Guardian.Born in Oswaldkirk, North Yorkshire, Bunting was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where she read History, and won a Knox postgraduate fellowship to study Politics and teach...
for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
(UK) claimed that de Soto's work was helpful to the Third Way
Third way (centrism)
The Third Way refers to various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies. Third Way approaches are commonly viewed from within the first- and second-way perspectives as...
political movement – an association that Bunting claimed would not fundamentally challenge world power structures. Reporter John Gravois also criticized de Soto for his ties to power circles, exemplified by his attendance at the Davos
Davos
Davos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of 11,248 . Davos is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
. In response, de Soto told Gravois that this proximity to power would help de Soto educate the elites about poverty. Ivan Osorio
Ivan Osorio
Ivan Osorio is a senior policy analyst, columnist and editor at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. He specializes in labor policy and Latin American affairs. Before working for CEI, Osorio wrote articles and policy studies for the Capital Research Center...
of the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit think tank founded on March 9, 1984 in Washington, D.C. by lobbyist Fred L. Smith, Jr to advance economic liberty and fight over-regulation by big government...
has refuted Gravois's allegations pointing out how Gravois has misinterpreted many of de Soto's recommendations.
Robert J. Samuelson
Robert J. Samuelson
Robert Jacob Samuelson is a contributing editor of Newsweek and The Washington Post where he has written about business and economic issues since 1977. His columns appear in both publications. His articles also appear in the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and other influential newspapers...
has argued against what he sees as de Soto's "single bullet" approach and has argued for a greater emphasis on culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
and how local conditions affect people's perceptions of their opportunities. The risk that titling will undermine customary forms of tenure and insufficiently protect the rights of land users that depend on the commons, as well as the fear that titling schemes may lead to further reconcentration of land ownership unless strong support is provided to smallholders, has also led the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, to question the insistence on titling as a means to protect security of tenure : while security of tenure matters, he stated in a report to the UN General Assembly presented in October 2010, this should be achieved by registering the rights of landusers and by the adoption of anti-eviction and tenancy laws, rather than by promoting the creation of a market for land rights that could in fact lead to deprive the poor, priced out from such markets, from access to land.
In the World Development
World Development
World Development is a multi-disciplinary scientific journal of development studies, published monthly....
journal, a 1990 article by R. G. Rossini and J. J. Thomas of the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
questioned the statistical basis of de Soto's claims about the size of the informal economy in his first book The Other Path. However, the ILD pointed out, in the same journal, that Rossini and Thomas’ observations "neither [addressed] the central theme of the book, nor [did it address] the main body of quantitative evidence displayed to substantiate the importance of economic and legal barriers that give rise to informal activities. Instead, [they focused] exclusively on four empirical estimates that the book [mentioned] only in passing".
In the Journal of Economic Literature
Journal of Economic Literature
The Journal of Economic Literature is a peer-reviewed academic journal on economy published by the American Economic Association. It was established in 1963 as the Journal of Economic Abstracts. As a review journal, it mainly features essays and reviews of recent economic theories...
, Christopher Woodruff of the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
criticized de Soto for overestimating the amount of wealth that land titling now informally owned property could unlock, and argues that "de Soto's own experience in Peru suggests that land titling by itself is not likely to have much effect. Titling must be followed by a series of politically challenging steps. Improving the efficiency of judicial systems, rewriting bankruptcy codes, restructuring financial market regulations, and similar reforms will involve much more difficult choices by policymakers.
"
This criticism is viewed by some to misjudge de Soto's official opinion. His book Mystery of Capital devotes the majority of its contents to the theory that legal reform is by far the most significant element of property reform.
Roy Culpepper notes that it is often very difficult to establish who owns what among the poor. He also notes that the titling is biased against those who are completely landless and propertyless.
Alan Gilbert finds that in Bogotá
Bogotá
Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...
, for example, giving legal titles has not created a better housing market or better supply of credit for the poor.
Legal scholar Jonathan Manders has argued that de Soto's vision of property rights reform is the correct one, but that the sequencing of proposed reforms will affect their sustainability over the long term.
Empirical studies by Argentine economists Sebastian Galiani and Ernesto Schargrodsky have taken issue with de Soto's link between titling and the increase in credit to the poor, but have also pointed out that families with titles "substantially increased housing investment, reduced household size, and improved the education of their children relative to the control group". A study commissioned by DFID, an agency of the U.K. government, further summarized many of the complications arising from implementing de Soto's policy recommendations when insufficient attention is paid to the local social context.
There are many explanations regarding how and what in capitalism causes growth, according to de Soto. In an interview with The Economist, he emphasizes the primary role of institutions, and points to successful examples of now-developed countries that reformed their legal system in defense of his property rights-oriented policy recommendations. De Soto's conclusions have inspired other work on microcredit, and the importance of property and business rights. For instance, the World Bank's popular "Doing Business" series (launched in 2004) that provides data for over 175 countries worldwide on opening and closing businesses, obtaining credit, labor laws, and fulfilling contract and property rights, was inspired by the ILD's work in Peru and elsewhere.
De Soto himself has often pointed out that his critics mistakenly claim that he advocates land titling by itself as sufficient for effective development: For example, in the ILD's new brochure he is quoted as saying, "The ILD is not just about titling. What we do is help Governments build a system of public memory that legally identifies all their people, their assets, their business records and their transactions in such a way that they can unleash their economic potential. No economy can develop and prosper without the benefits that clearly registered public documents bestow."
Books
De Soto has published two books about economic development: The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World in 1986 in Spanish (with a new edition in 2002 titled The Other Path, The Economic Answer to Terrorism), and at the end of 2000, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Both books have been international bestsellers, translated into some 30 languages.The original Spanish-language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
title of The Other Path is El Otro Sendero, an allusion to de Soto's alternative proposals for development in Peru, countering the attempts of Peru's "Shining Path
Shining Path
Shining Path is a Maoist guerrilla terrorist organization in Peru. The group never refers to itself as "Shining Path", and as several other Peruvian groups, prefers to be called the "Communist Party of Peru" or "PCP-SL" in short...
" ("Sendero Luminoso") to win the support of Peru's poor. Based on five years worth of ILD research into the causes of massive informality and legal exclusion in Peru, the book was also a direct intellectual challenge to the Shining Path, offering to the poor of Peru not the violent overthrow of the system but "the other path" out of poverty, through legal reform. In response, the Senderistas added de Soto to their assassination list, In July 1992, the terrorists sent a second car bomb into ILD headquarters in Lima, killing 3 and wounding 19.
In addition, he has written, with Francis Cheneval, Swiss Human Rights Book Volume 1: Realizing Property Rights, published in 2006 – a collection of papers presented at an International Symposium in Switzerland in 2006 on the urgency of property rights in impoverished countries for small business owners, women and other fragile human groups, such as the poor and political refugees. The book includes a paper on the ILD's work in Tanzania delivered by Hernando de Soto.
- De Soto, Hernando. The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World. Harpercollins, 1989. ISBN 0-06-016020-9
- De Soto, Hernando. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0-465-01614-6
- De Soto, Hernando. The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism. Basic Books, 2002. ISBN 0-465-01610-3
- De Soto, Hernando and Francis Cheneval. Swiss Human Rights Book Volume 1: Realizing Property Rights, 2006. ISBN 978-3-907625-25-5
- Smith, Barry et al. (eds.)., The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality, Chicago: Open Court, 2008. ISBN 0-8126-9615-8
Articles
Over the years, De Soto has also published a number of articles on the importance of inclusive property and business rights, legally empowering the poor, and the causes of the global financial crisis of 2008-09 in leading newspapers and magazines around the world. In 2001, Time magazine published "The Secret of Non-Success," the New York Times ran his post-September 11 op-ed essay "The Constituency of Terror," and the IMF's Finance & Development magazine published "The Mystery of Capital", a condensed version of the third chapter of his eponymous book. In 2007, Time magazine published "Giving the Poor their Rights", an article written with former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, on the legal empowerment of the poor. In 2009, Newsweek International published his essay on the financial crisis, "Toxic Paper" – along with an on-line interview with him, "Slumdogs and Millionaires." That was soon followed by two more articles on the crisis, in the Wall Street Journal ("Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets") and The Los Angeles Times ("Global Meltdown Rule #1: Do the Math"). Versions of these articles also appeared in newspapers in France, Switzerland, Germany and Latin America. In 2011, Bloomberg published “The Destruction of Economic Facts”, and The Washington Post recently ran “The cost of financial ignorance”. When protests began in Cairo at the beginning of 2011, The Wall Street Journal published De Soto's "Egypt's Economic Apartheid", and Financial Times later published "The free-market secret of the Arab Revolution".- De Soto, Hernando. "Why Capitalism Works in the West but Not Elsewhere", International Herald Tribune, 5 January 2001.
- De Soto, Hernando. "The Mystery of Capital", Finance & Development, March 2001, Volume 38, Number 1.
- De Soto, Hernando. "The Secret of Non-Success", Time magazine, 16 April 2001.
- De Soto, Hernando. "The Constituency of Terror", The New York Times, 15 October 2001.
- De Soto, Hernando. Push Property Rights, The Washington Post, 6 January 2002.
- De Soto, Hernando. "Law and Property Outside the West: A Few New Ideas About Fighting Poverty", Optima Special Issue on Sustainable Development. Vol. 48 No. 1, September 2002, pp 2–9.
- De Soto, Hernando. "Law and Property Outside the West: A Few New Ideas About Fighting Poverty", NUPI. December 2002, pp. 349–361.
- De Soto, Hernando. "Law and Property Outside the West: A Few New Ideas About Fighting Poverty". In Marc A. Miles (ed.) The Road to Prosperity: The 21st Century Approach to Economic Development. Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 99-119. 2004
- De Soto, Hernando. "What if you can't prove you had a house?", International Herald Tribune/New York Times, 20 January 2006.
- De Soto, Hernando. "Toxic Paper", Newsweek, 21 Feb. 2009.
- De Soto, Hernando. "De Soto: la recesión tiene origen legal, no financiero", El Comercio, 3 March 2009 http://www.elcomercio.com.pe/noticia/253567/soto-recesion-tiene-origen-legal-no-financiero
- De Soto, Hernando. "Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets", The Wall Street Journal, 25 March 2009
- De Soto, Hernando. "Crise financière: une crise… du papier", Le Figaro, 27 March 2009
- De Soto, Hernando. "Global Meltdown Rule No. 1: Do the math", Los Angeles Times, 12 April 2009.
- De Soto, Hernando. “Staying in the dark about derivatives will bring economic collapse”, QFinance, 29 October 2010
- De Soto, Hernando. “La Amazonía no es Avatar”, El Comercio, 5 June 2010
- De Soto, Hernando. “Egypt’s Economic Apartheid”, The Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2011
- De Soto, Hernando. “The Destruction of Economic Facts”, Bloomberg Businessweek, 28 April 2011
- De Soto, Hernando. “The cost of financial ignorance”, The Washington Post, 7 October 2011
- De Soto, Hernando. “The free-market secret of the Arab revolution”, Financial Times, 8 November 2011
See also
- LiberalismLiberalismLiberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
- Contributions to liberal theoryContributions to liberal theoryIndividual contributors to classical liberalism and political liberalism are associated with philosophers of the Enlightenment. Liberalism as a specifically named ideology begins in the late 18th century as a movement towards self-government and away from aristocracy...
- Informal economyInformal economyThe informal sector or informal economy as defined by governments, scholars, banks, etc. is the part of an economy that is not taxed, monitored by any form of government, or included in any gross national product , unlike the formal economy....
- Dependency theoryDependency theoryDependency theory or dependencia theory is a body of social science theories predicated on the notion that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former...
- DocumentalityDocumentalityDocumentality is the theory of documents that underlies the ontology of social reality put forward by the Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris . The theory gives to documents a central position within the sphere of social objects, conceived as distinct from physical and ideal objects...
External links
- Institute for Liberty and Democracy official website.
- "Slumdogs vs. Millionaires", Newsweek's Barrett Sheridan interviews Hernando de Soto
- http://www.greatissuesforum.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=76The Great Issues Forum, video of Naomi KleinNaomi KleinNaomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...
, Joseph Stiglitz, and Hernando de Soto discussing the financial crisis] - "Mapping the Invisible", speech by Hernando de Soto at the 2009 ESRI International User Conference
- The Munk Debate on Foreign Aid, 2009. Stephen Lewis and Paul Collier against Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto and Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born critic of foreign aid.
- Afternoon of Conversation: Andrea Mitchell, Madeleine Albright, Hernando De Soto, video of conversation
- The Rule of Law - an interview with Hernando de Soto By Gustavo Wensjoe 2008
- Transcript of an interview for the PBS documentary Commanding Heights.
- A highly critical review in the British newspaper The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
- http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20010101fareviewessay2001010112/robert-j-samuelson/the-spirit-of-capitalism.htmlAn essay by Robert Samuelson in Foreign AffairsForeign AffairsForeign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
, arguing that de Soto underestimates the importance of culture] - The Power of the Poor Documentary about de Soto's work by Free to Choose Media