Professor Ramirez is a native of Chile
and a naturalized U.S. citizen since
1990. He received his Ph.D. in
economics from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984
and has been at Trinity College since
1985. He has held visiting positions
at the University of Illinois at
Champaign-Urbana (Summer 1991 and
1992), Haverford College (Spring
1992), Vanderbilt University (Spring
1999), and Yale University (Spring
2006). His teaching interests are
primarily in the areas of Latin
American economic development and
international finance and open economy
macroeconomics. At the College he
usually offers Latin American economic
development and Structural Reform in
Latin America during the fall term,
while international finance and open
economy macroeconomics is taught
during the spring term. He also
teaches a course in Time-Series
Analysis every other spring term, with
particular emphasis on unit root and
cointegration analysis, error
correction modeling, and forecasting.
Insofar as his research is concerned,
it is primarily dedicated to analyzing
the challenges and opportunities that
Latin American nations face as they
attempt to stabilize and reform their
economies in an increasingly
globalized world. In particular, his
work has reviewed and analyzed the
impact of IMF-sponsored adjustment and
stabilization measures in Argentina,
Chile, and Mexico, as well as the
mixed success of structural reform
programs such as privatization of
state-owned firms, deregulation of
economic activity, and liberalization
of trade and finance. His research has
also focused on the economic and
institutional determinants of foreign
direct investment in Argentina, Chile,
and Mexico, as well as the impact of
these flows on private capital
formation and labor productivity
growth in Latin America. Another
important focus of his work in recent
years has been the growing role of
remittance flows in financing private
investment spending and boosting
economic growth in countries such as
Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, El
Salvador, Jamaica, and Mexico.
Finally, he has published work in
the history of economic thought
relating to Marx's important analysis
of wages and cyclical crises, his
theory of absolute and differential
ground rent, his analysis of the
falling rate of profit, Marx's
controversial writings on the
so-called Asiatic mode of production,
and his conception of capital as a
social process.