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Welcome to Professor Carlos Rufin's Webpage |
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I am Assistant Professor of Management at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where I teach international business. In addition, I am the Faculty Director for Babson’s Institute of Latin American Business, where I work on the development of initiatives to strengthen the ties between Babson and Latin America.
I joined Babson in the fall of 2000 after obtaining a Ph.D. in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Prior to pursuing a doctorate, I worked for several years in the chemical industry in Europe and as a consultant to the energy industry in the U.S.
My research focuses on the relations between business and government in developing countries, and particularly in the context of the economic reforms of the last two decades, which resulted in the transformation of the public sector from producer to regulator. After examining the factors that influenced this transformation in the electric power industry in my recently published book, I am now examining the strategies of foreign-owned utilities for managing political and regulatory risk in developing countries, especially in Latin America, where the most far-reaching changes have taken place. From early on in my research I have advocated the idea that, in the absence of strong protection of property rights and of judicial independence in most developing countries, the institutional changes entailed by privatization and the creation of new regulatory agencies—which are largely modeled on the United States’ system of regulation—can only take hold by gaining legitimacy among the population of these countries. Through my research and my consulting work for multilateral and foreign aid entities, I argue that an important source of legitimacy is procedural justice, a fundamental element of the U.S. model that has been neglected in many developing countries. Socially inclusive and transparent regulatory processes provide the opportunity to make regulatory decisions more acceptable to all those affected by them, thereby eliciting fewer attempts to bypass regulatory agencies or change the regulatory framework in arbitrary ways that can only discourage private investment. Procedural justice is also important because it is infused by strongly democratic principles, inclusiveness and transparency. The experience gained in the regulatory arena can be extended to many other public policy making processes, and thereby deepen democratic governance in developing countries.
A second stream of my research is also derived from the problematic legitimacy of “market-friendly” institutional transformations in developing countries. The history of foreign private ownership of public utilities in Latin America reveals that the legitimacy of foreign private ownership is also questioned when companies fail to address the needs of the poor, which constitute a majority or a plurality of the population in developing countries. Providing basic utility services, such as potable water or electricity, to the large poor populations in these countries is a major challenge for privately-owned companies that obtain most of their financial resources from capital markets. My research in this area focuses on the strategies that are being developed by foreign-owned utilities to address the needs of the poor, and the applicability of the emerging “base of the pyramid” paradigm to the case of network utilities. |
