Dr. Gabriel Ondetti’s article, “The Roots of Brazil’s Heavy Taxation,” published last year in the Journal of Latin American Studies Journal of Latin American Studies was chosen as the best article of 2015 by the Political Economy Section of the Latin American Studies Association.

From the award committee: “Gabriel Ondetti’s comparative historical article argues that the reason for Brazil’s uniquely large tax burden – by Latin American standards – since the mid-twentieth century stems from the class basis of state-led growth and the political preferences for democracy. While economic and political elites in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay feared that a strong state could address the calls for wealth redistribution by non-elites and began scaling the state back during the bureaucratic authoritarian dictatorships, in Brazil both economic elites and non-elites favored a strong developmental state after the Second World War that fueled industrialization and economic growth during the BA period and after the return of democracy. Countering a long list of potential alternative explanations, Ondetti’s article makes a compelling argument that complements theories of taxation Latin America by shifting the focus away from resource endowments.”