Economics
These Harvard Economists Offer Differing Views for How to Save Venezuela
- Harvard’s Ricardo Hausmann favors government ouster, IMF aid
- Francisco Rodriguez wants unity government and avoiding IMF
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Six months ago, with Venezuela hurtling toward calamity, one of its most renowned economists living in exile assembled a group of scholars with a decidedly unacademic goal: to save the country. Ricardo Hausmann, 60, a Harvard professor and former government minister, brought together monetary experts, oil engineers and sociologists.
One key player was excluded -- Francisco Rodriguez, 46, a widely-read economist, himself a Harvard PhD, who co-edited a book with Hausmann and once viewed him as a mentor. Stung by the rejection, Rodriguez, now chief economist at Torino Capital, an emerging market investment bank in New York, has pushed forward his own view on how to pull the country back from the brink.