Naím, Moisés

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.Sc, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—Foreign Policy, 1779 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20036.

CAREER: Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, Caracas, Venezuela, former professor and dean; Venezuela minister of trade and industry, early 1990s; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, former director of the projects on economic reforms; former executive director and later senior advisor to the president of the World Bank; Foreign Policy (magazine), Washington, DC, editor; chair, Group of Fifty (Latin American business organization). Member of board of international economists for Time magazine.

WRITINGS:

Multinacionales: la economía política de las inversions extranjeras, Monte Avila Editores: Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (Caracas, Venezuela), 1982.

(With Ramon Pinango) El Caso Venezuela: una ilusión de armonía, Ediciones IESA (Caracas, Venezuela), 1984.

Posibilidades y limitaciones del funcionamiento de los mercados en los países menos desarrollados: una aplicación del enfoque de mercados y jerarquías al caso de Venezuela, Ediciones IESA (Caracas, Venezuela), 1985.

Las Empresas venezolanas: su gerencia, Ediciones IESA (Caracas, Venezuela), 1989.

Paper Tigers and Minotaurs: The Politics of Venezuela's Economic Reforms, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, DC), 1993.

Latin America's Journey to the Market: From Macroeconomic Shocks to Institutional Therapy, ICS Press (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

(Editor, with Sebastian Edwards) Mexico 1994: Anatomy of an Emerging-Market Crash, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, DC), 1997.

(Editor, with Joseph S. Tulchin) Competition Policy, Deregulation, and Modernization in Latin America, L. Rienner (Boulder, CO), 1999.

(With Gordon Smith) Altered States: Globalization, Sovereignty, and Governance, International Development Research Centre (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of opinion columns to periodicals, including the Financial Times, El País, and Newsweek.

SIDELIGHTS: Moisés Naírn has had a long career in both government institutions and as a writer and editor focusing on international issues such as economics. In his Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy, the author examines how illegal commerce spread dramatically throughout the world after the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Tracing the rise in illegal markets to various sources, such as new and unrestricted technologies and the rise of a global free market, Naím explores the dark side of illegal trading in areas such as weapons, drugs, counterfeiting, and even trafficking in human beings. The author also presents his views on the various factors that have continued to contribute to these illegal markets, such as their ties to legitimate markets and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Jeffrey E. Garten remarked in Business Week that the author's "major point is that globe-spanning criminal networks are organized in decentralized, cell-like structures that make them as hard to eliminate as al Qaeda." In a review in Corporate Counsel, Amy Vincent commented that the author "compellingly argues that illegal trade represents a real threat to global stability, and that grand crimes and petty ones are far more intertwined than most people realize." A Publishers Weekly contributor declared the book to be a "sweeping and informative work."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2005, David Siegfried, review of Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy, p. 31.

Business Week, October 10, 2005, Jeffrey E. Garten, review of Illicit, p. 130.

Corporate Counsel, February 2006, Amy Vincent, review of Illicit, p. 107.

Independent (London, England), January 20, 2006, Diane Coyle, review of Illicit.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2005, review of Illicit, p. 833.

Management Today, January 16, 2006, review of Illicit, p. 29.

Publishers Weekly, August 15, 2005, review of Illicit, p. 50.

ONLINE

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Web site, http://www.ceip.org/ (April 24, 2006), brief profile of the author.

Foreign Policy Web site, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ (April 24, 2006), brief profile of the author.

Moisés Naírn Home Page, http://www.moisesnaim.com (April 24, 2006).