# *Latin American Development Priorities* (2010) Back to [[Authors/@BjornLomborg/Books/Books Overview|Books Overview]] · [[Authors/@BjornLomborg/BjornLomborg-x-profile|@BjornLomborg]] · Topic: [[Topics/Climate Change Science and Policy Debate/Climate Change Science and Policy Debate|Climate Change Science and Policy Debate]] > **Reference outline for a reader who has read the book.** Full title: ***Latin American Development Priorities: Costs and Benefits***. This is the book of the **Consulta de San José** (22–25 October 2007, INCAE Business School, Alajuela, Costa Rica), run with the Inter-American Development Bank — the first regional Copenhagen Consensus. Publication facts from the CUP frontmatter, CUP online listings, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and the IDB press release. ## Publication facts - **Editor:** Bjørn Lomborg (then Copenhagen Consensus Center / Copenhagen Business School). - **Publisher:** Cambridge University Press. Frontmatter: copyright **Copenhagen Consensus Center 2009**, "First published **2009**"; CUP online chapter pages and the ebook DOI listing give print/online publication **2010** (ebook dated 28 January 2010). Report both years; the hardcover listings commonly use 2010. - **ISBN:** Hardback **978-0-521-76690-6** / 0521766906; paperback **978-0-521-74752-3** (frontmatter: "Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521747523"). Ebook DOI **10.1017/CBO9780511809910**. - **Length:** Conclusion begins at p. 693 in the CUP frontmatter TOC; trade listings give about **724** pages (Bokus hardcover). Lists of figures, tables, contributors and a long "Expert panel findings" front section (pp. xxv ff.). - **Foreword:** Luis Alberto Moreno (then IDB president) — listed in CUP/Bokus contents. - **What it is:** Ten challenge chapters, each with a main CBA paper and an "alternative view," plus introduction, expert-panel findings and conclusion. The panel was asked what Latin American and Caribbean governments should do with an additional nominal **$10 billion** (book blurb / CUP abstract). The CCC project page phrases the same question as "$10 billion more over the next five years." - **Place in his work:** Follows the global CC04 volumes (*Global Crises, Global Solutions*; *$50 Billion*; *Solutions for the World's Biggest Problems*) and is contemporaneous with *Smart Solutions to Climate Change* (2010). It is the template for later national/regional books (*Bangladesh Priorities*, *Haiti Prioritizes*). ## Thesis The region has grown, but it still faces a long list of "intractable" problems, and the development-agency habit of saying everything must be funded at once is not a budget. Rank the options by benefit per dollar, then spend the extra $10 billion from the top of the list. ## The Consulta de San José - **When / where:** 22–25 October 2007, INCAE, Alajuela, Costa Rica (CCC: "Copenhagen Consensus for Latin America and the Caribbean"). - **Partners:** Inter-American Development Bank (Research Department) and INCAE. - **How the ten challenges were chosen:** an IDB electronic survey (November 2006) of LAC professionals — policymakers, academics, business, journalists, researchers. - **Solution papers:** about twenty regional and international specialists, covering 44 proposals across the ten challenges (IDB press release). - **Two rankings:** a nine-economist expert panel, and a parallel ranking by 49 graduate students from the region. IDB president Moreno said the lists should not be read as a rigid prescription or as official IDB recommendations. ### Expert panel (nine, from the CCC participants page) 1. **Finn E. Kydland** — Nobel laureate in economics (2004), University of California 2. **Ricardo Hausmann** — Harvard CID / Kennedy School 3. **José Antonio Ocampo** — Columbia SIPA; former UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs 4. **Andrés Velasco** — then Chile's minister of finance (on leave from the Kennedy School) 5. **Nancy Birdsall** — then president, Center for Global Development 6. **Jere Behrman** (CCC spelling "Berhman") — University of Pennsylvania 7. **Nora Lustig** — then Shapiro Visiting Professor, George Washington University; former head of UNDP's Poverty Group 8. **John H. Coatsworth** — Harvard, Latin American affairs 9. **Orazio Attanasio** — University College London / IFS ## Chapter outline (CUP frontmatter TOC) **Expert panel findings** (p. xxv) · **Introduction** — Bjørn Lomborg (p. 1) 1. **Democracy** — Mark P. Jones (p. 13) 2. **Education** — Amy Damon and Paul Glewwe (p. 45); alternative view Miguel Urquiola (p. 92) 3. **Employment and social security** — Alejandra Cox Edwards (p. 103); alternative view Adriana Kugler (p. 146) 4. **Environment** — Roger A. Sedjo and Juha Siikamäki (p. 163); alternative view Randall A. Kramer (p. 227) 5. **Fiscal problems** — Miguel Braun (p. 235); alternative view Max A. Alier and Benedict Clements (p. 274) 6. **Health** — Philip Musgrove (p. 293); alternative view William D. Savedoff (p. 342) 7. **Infrastructure** — Julio A. Gonzalez, José Luis Guasch and Tomás Serebrisky (p. 359); alternative view Ronald Fischer (p. 412) 8. **Poverty** — Sebastián Galiani (p. 423); alternative view Stephen D. Younger (p. 498) 9. **Public administration** — Susan Rose-Ackerman (p. 515); alternative view Ugo Panizza (p. 591) 10. **Violence and crime** — Mark A. Cohen and Mauricio Rubio (p. 621); alternative view Andrew Morrison (p. 680) **Conclusion** — Bjørn Lomborg (p. 693) Page numbers are from the CUP frontmatter PDF. Alternative-perspective authors are part of the design, not afterthoughts. ## Expert-panel ranking (IDB press release) If LAC governments had an extra $10 billion, the economists' top ten were: 1. Early childhood development 2. Fiscal rules 3. Increase investment in infrastructure, including maintenance 4. A policy and program evaluation agency 5. Conditional cash transfers 6. Universal health insurance: basic package 7. Nutrition programs for preschool children 8. Crime prevention through environmental design 9. Replace taxes on formal employment with other taxes 10. Adopt policies and services to reduce transaction costs for trade The students ranked preschool nutrition, nutrition for poor children, and education-focused CCTs in their top three — a more social-spending list, still not environment-first. **What did not make the economists' top ten:** the environment chapter's avoided-deforestation / biodiversity proposals, and most of the democracy and public-administration menu (evaluation capacity excepted). That is the same shape as the global Copenhagen Consensus rankings: health, nutrition, early childhood, trade/infrastructure and better public-finance rules beat climate- and forest-first spending on a pure BCR ranking. Moreno publicly warned against treating the list as one formula for every country. ## How the claims have held up - **Method.** The regional panel-plus-alternative-view format became the house style for later CCC country books. The "$10 billion" framing is a teaching device, not a budget appropriation. - **Substance.** Early childhood development, fiscal rules, infrastructure maintenance, independent evaluation and CCTs remain mainstream IDB/World Bank priorities. That does not by itself validate every BCR in the 2007 papers — those use mid-2000s unit costs and should be read as dated CBAs. - **Environment vs development.** The low ranking of avoided deforestation is the volume's most controversial design result, and it prefigures the argument Lomborg still makes on X: climate and conservation spending should not crowd out higher-BCR health, nutrition and education buys in poorer countries (see the climate-share-of-aid analyses and the World Bank "climate fixation" posts in the [[Authors/@BjornLomborg/Topical List|Topical List]]). - **Reception.** No widely cited hostile review comparable to the DCSD episode or Stiglitz on *False Alarm* was located for this volume. The IDB presented it as a research-department exercise and immediately caveated it. A dedicated scholarly critique of the San José BCRs was not opened this run ⚠️. ## Links to his X posts - The development-priority lane (T7) — TB, malaria, maternal health, agricultural R&D, nutrition, land tenure, e-procurement, pedagogy — is the global sequel to this book's ECD / nutrition / evaluation ranking. - Posts attacking the World Bank's and IMF's "climate fixation" (April 2026 Bessent conversation; The Hill op-ed) repeat the San José moral: extra public money should hit the top of a BCR list, and climate projects often would not.