Overcoming Underdevelopment

Hernando de Soto, Peruvian businessman and economist, is president of the lnstituto Libertad y Democracia (ILD), an independent research and advocacy institute in Lima that has also implemented major legal reforms through cooperative agreements with the Peruvian government. He is also the author of the best-selling El Otro Sendero (The Other Path), published in Spanish in 1987 and in English translation in 1989, which describes the results of the ILD’s extensive research on the informal sector and the role of institutions in the development process.

Deborah Orsini is the ILD’s director of international programs. She has designed and manages the ILD’s cooperative agreements to replicate its reform programs in other developing countries, including El Salvador, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, and Nicaragua.