Economic Freedom and Market Reforms in Latin America With Sebastian Edwards

• Finance & Banking
• Economics
• History
• Monetary Policy
• Economic
• Political Philosophy
• Politics, Institutions, and Public Opinion

• Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies

Jon Hartley and Sebastian Edwards discuss Edward’s time at the University of Chicago as a PhD student in the time of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, Chile’s market reforms and the Chicago Boys (documented in Sebastian’s most recent book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism), Javier Milei and Argentina’s prospects of reversal, renewed hope for Venezuela, and whether economic freedom and market reforms have returned.

Recorded on May 7, 2026.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Sebastian Edwards is the Henry Ford II Chair in International Management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. From 1993 until April 1996, he was the chief economist for the Latin America and Caribbean region of the World Bank. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a member of the advisory board of Transnational Research Corporation and co-chairman of the Inter-American Seminar on Economics (IASE).

Edwards has been a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and is the author of more that 200 scientific articles on international economics, macroeconomics and economic development. Edwards is an associate editor of The World Economy, the Journal of International Trade and Economic Development, the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money and Analisis Economico. For almost 10 years he was the co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics. He is the author of several books, including most recently The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism. 

Jon Hartley is currently a Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, an economics PhD Candidate at Stanford University, a Research Fellow at the UT-Austin Civitas Institute, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and an Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center. Jon also is the host of the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century Podcast, an official podcast of the Hoover Institution, a member of the Canadian Group of Economists, and the chair of the Economic Club of Miami.

Jon has previously worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management as a Fixed Income Portfolio Construction and Risk Management Associate and as a Quantitative Investment Strategies Client Portfolio Management Senior Analyst and in various policy/governmental roles at the World Bank, IMF, Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the Bank of Canada. 

Jon has also been a regular economics contributor for National Review Online, Forbes and The Huffington Post and has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Star among other outlets. Jon has also appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, Bloomberg, and NBC and was named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 Law & Policy list, the 2017 Wharton 40 Under 40 list and was previously a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. 

RELATED SOURCES

• Edwards, Sebastian, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism. University Chicago Press, 2023.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21^st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics.

For more information, visit: capitalismandfreedom.substack.com/