Global Studies Seminar presents Pedro Cadenas

The Global Studies Seminar presents a talk titled “The Venezuelan Collapse,” by Pedro Cadenas, assistant professor of economics at Denison.

Cadenas received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Business Administration in Finance from Universidad Metropolitana and completed a Master of Science in Philosophy and Human Sciences (ABD) at Universidad Central de Venezuela. Cadenas received his Ph.D. in Economics, as a Fulbright Alumni, from the New School for Social Research in New York. Prior to academia, he accumulated 10 years of professional experience in finance: 7 years in the private sector and the remaining 3 years in the public sector. His research interests lie in finance, philosophy of economics, and economics and psychology.

Venezuela’s economic and political collapse has now become the biggest crisis in the history of Latin America. Venezuela’s decline in GDP, at least between 1960 and 2018, is one of the highest in the world during a 5 year period. This list includes countries that have gone through terrible wars and/or have suffered directly from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hyperinflation, dictatorship, political violence, food and medicine shortages, and soaring crime rates have forced more than 3.3. millions of Venezuelans to leave their country in the past 4 years. It is one of the largest and swiftest massive migrations in the history of the region. In this presentation, economic and social indicators will be presented as evidence that the crisis is mostly the consequence of incompetence, ideology in the service of power, massive corruption and the dismantlement of basic democratic institutions. The presentation will also cover a brief discussion about the current political situation, the recent report of the UN produced by the High Commissioner on Human Rights, and some of the biggest difficulties that lie ahead for finding a possible way out.