Latin American Studies Series

hosted by Professor Jacqueline Mazza


Carol Wise is Associate Professor, School of International Relations at the University of Southern California (USC), and she currently holds the Fulbright-Masaryk University Distinguished Chair Grant, Czech Republic.

Wise has written widely on trade integration, exchange rate crises, institutional reform, and the political economy of market restructuring in the Latin America region.

She is author of the forthcoming book, Dragonomics: How Latin America is Maximizing or (Missing Out) on China's International Development Strategy (Yale University Press, 2019), which analyzes the rapid economic ties that have developed between China and Latin America since the 1990s. Her study approaches this phenomenon from three main angles: the relative rise of China in the global economy such that it has now replaced the U.S. as the most important trading partner for an increasing number of countries in Latin America; the decidedly more heterodox and flexible approach to economic policy management that increased relations with China has instilled in its main Latin American partners; and, the political implications of the growing presence of a "new" hegemon in the Western Hemisphere, one that has resisted the longstanding U.S. notion that liberal capitalist democracy is the only acceptable form of governance.

Wise's recent publications include: "Conceptualizing China-Latin America Relations in the 21st Century: The Boom, the Bust, & the Aftermath" (with Victoria Chonn Ching), The Pacific Review (2017); "Playing both Sides of the Pacific: Latin America's Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with China," Pacific Affairs (2016); The Political Economy of China-Latin American Relations in the New Millennium (co-edited with Margaret Myers, Routledge, 2016); and "Good-bye Financial Crash, Hello Financial Eclecticism: Latin American Responses to the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis" (co-authored with Manuel Pastor), Journal of International Money and Finance (2015).