Articles, Videos and Interviews

Articles

  • The Hidden Architecture of Capital "Imagine a country where the law that governs property rights is so deficient that nobody can easily identify who owns what, addresses cannot be systematically verified, and people cannot be made to pay their debts. Consider not being able to use your own house or business to guarantee credit. Imagine a property system where you can't divide your ownership in a business into shares that investors can buy, or where descriptions of assets are not standardized."
  • The Constituency of Terror "Newspaper headlines and television anchors across the United States ask, "Who are these people who hate us so much?" We who live in the Third World and the former Soviet nations know terrorism well. The 21st century terrorists we confront are ruthless politicians with domestic ambitions. Killing innocents is but a means to an end: taking control of political power in their own countries. But these terrorist politicians have a common problem. They are small minorities in their own countries..."

Videos

  • The Future of Democracy and Markets in Latin America.  On November 2007, John Sullivan, CIPE's executive director, sat down with Hernando to talk about the future of reform in Latin America in the context of his work. These are some of the questions he asked de Soto: Is it reasonable to expect support for free markets in the region? What is the future of democracy in Latin America? What do citizens see as their primary concerns and who can offer best solutions to their problems? 
  • The Power of the Poor Capitalism's Moment of Truth (2005), a four-minute film featuring Hernando de Soto summarizing his ideas and the ILD’s work -- produced by an independent U.S. filmmaker to raise funds for a two-hour television documentary about the ILD. With the financing now in place, the documentary is currently in production and will air in the U.S. in 2008. (Requires Windows Media)
  • Breathing new life into dead capital Landmark presentation of preliminary studies on the extralegal economy of 12 Latin American countries developed for the Inter-American Development Bank. It includes a video, an interactive presentation and a full set of executive summaries.
  • The Global Divide Sample 1 and The Global Divide Sample 2 four- and seven-minute samples of Daniel Yergin's interview to Jeffrey Sachs, professor of Economy at Harvard, and Hernando de Soto, President of the ILD. Here is the full text of the program

Interviews and Speeches

  • Is Economic Freedom for Everyone? Lecture delivered on September 29, 2006 at The Heritage Foundation. " What I’m going to talk to you about is some of the things that we have learned since the publi­cation of The Mystery of Capital, how we go about doing our research and how we go about finding out why, even if there is now no competing mod­el to the market economy—because, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s the only game in town—we advocates of markets in the develop­ing world still face difficulties." PDF of the lecture
  • Knowledge, Archives and Development with Hernando de Soto 10/25/2004 “Hernando de Soto, Director of Peru’s Institute for Liberty, and author of The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, opened his address by stating he believed the Bank’s new policy of making its archives more open to the public can promote more than just more development, but peace as well”
  • Frank Porter Graham Lecture sponsored by the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences, on October 26, 2004. “Economist Hernando de Soto sees property rights as solution to global povertyPeruvian economist Hernando de Soto has the ear of heads of state across the political spectrum as well as impoverished farmers and black-market street vendors around the world. This fall, he came to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to discuss his internationally lauded policies advocating property rights for the poor as a solution to global poverty. “
  • Uncommon Knowledge. Culture Clash A Talk with Hernando De Soto Filmed on April 22, 2002. Interviewer: Peter Robinson "In the West, capitalism reigns triumphant. Living standards, wealth, and technological development in the capitalist Western countries surpass anything seen before in human history. But why has capitalism so obviously failed in most developing countries? Why are some saying that capitalism is in a state of crisis today in the Third World? Does the success of capitalism depend on Western cultural values that simply don't translate to the Third World? Or can economic and political reforms, especially reform of property rights, enable developing countries to share the same fruits of capitalism and free enterprise that we enjoy in the West?"
  • Capitalism and the Road to Prosperity (PBS) Interview at the Public Broadcasting System's program "Commanding Heights".broadcast on 3/30-31/2001.

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