Publication: Reclaiming the Lost Century of Growth: Building Learning Economies in
Latin America and the Caribbean
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2025-06-06
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2025-09-09
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Update: The Spanish version of the full book was published on September 9, 2025.
Latin America and the Caribbean has lost not decades but a century of growth due to its inability to learn—to identify, adapt, and implement the new technologies emerging since the Second Industrial Revolution. Superstars like Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay fell behind peers like France and Germany, while the entire region retrogressed in industries it once dominated and was unable to take advantage of new opportunities that propelled similarly lagging countries to high-income status. The report shows that this remains the case today as the region’s firms continue to lag in assimilating new technologies. However, it argues that Latin America and the Caribbean can reclaim the lost century by building learning economies, creating the human capital, institutions, and incentives needed to increase the demand for knowledge, facilitate the flow of new ideas, and foment the process of experimentation.
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“Maloney, William F.; Cirera, Xavier; Ferreyra, Maria Marta. 2025. Reclaiming the Lost Century of Growth: Building Learning Economies in
Latin America and the Caribbean. World Bank Latin American and Caribbean Studies. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43280 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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