Felipe Larraín Bascuñán

Felipe Larraín Bascuñán
Minister of Finance
In office 11 March 2010 – 11 March 2014
President	Sebastián Piñera
Preceded by	Andrés Velasco Brañes
Succeeded by	Alberto Arenas
Personal details
Born	(1958-02-14) 14 February 1958 Santiago, Chile
Spouse	Francisca Cisternas Lira
Children	5
Alma mater	Pontifical Catholic University of Chile Harvard University

Felipe Larraín Bascuñán is a Chilean economist and scholar, former Minister of Finance under President Sebastián Piñera.

Early life

Felipe Larraín’s parents are Vicente Larraín Izquierdo and Marta Bascuñán Lazcano. His first studies were carried out in San Ignacio School and Tabancura School in Santiago de Chile. Between 1976 and 1980 he went to college at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Economics) in 1981. In 1981 he was admitted to the Economics Ph.D Program at Harvard University. He completed his Ph.D dissertation in 1985, with the title “Essays on the Exchange Rate and Economic Activity in Developing Countries."

Professional Life

Larraín began his professional academic career at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile by lecturing courses in Macroeconomics, Economic History and Econometrics. After a few years, he was appointed Full-Time Professor in the same institution. Between 1985 and 1986 he worked as a consultant for the Monetary and Fiscal Authorities in Bolivia and Venezuela. In the same period, he participated as a consultant for the World Bank. These activities lasted until 1988.

In the 90’s he was part of the team of economists from the World Bank who advised the transition of Eastern Europe Countries to a modern market economy. He also worked as an economic adviser for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, and as a consultant for the United Nations, ECLAC, IBD and the International Monetary Fund.

Felipe Larraín has received several awards. In 1980, he was awarded the Raul Yver Oxley Prize to the best graduating student in Economics from his class. In 2002, he was chosen as the Commercial Engineer of the Year by his peers in Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Finance Minister

Larraín was one of the main members of the Tantauco group that won the elections in 2009 with Sebastián Piñera as Presidential candidate. After their triumph, Larraín became Finance Minister of Chile and Chief of the Economic Team in the Pinera Administration. His mandate started on March 11, 2010.

In October 2010, he was named the Finance Minister of the Year by Emerging Markets. In January 2011, he was elected the Finance Minister of the Year for America by the British newspaper The Banker.

During his administration, his work was noticeable because of the successful plan to come up with resources to carry out the reconstruction after a devastating earthquake destroyed a huge amount of infrastructure in February 2010, a few days before the start of the Pinera administration. In 2012, he proposed and successfully approved in the Congress a Tax Reform to inject additional resources to the Education Budget and to fund the Pension Reform from the previous administration.

One of the most praised accomplishments during his mandate was the creation of more than one million jobs during the Piñera administration. The Gross Domestic Product expanded at one of the highest rates in the world in years when the European Debt Crisis slowed the economic activity all around the globe.

Selected works

• Chile: A developed nation, Aguilar, forthcoming, 2007.
• Sachs, Jeffrey and Larraín, Felipe. Macroeconomics in the Global Economy Prentice Hall, 1993.