Carlos Marichal (born 1948) is a Mexican economic historian who currently works at El Colegio de México, where he has taught since 1989.
His best known work is the book A Century of Debt Crises in Latin America: From Independence to the Great Depression, 1820-1930 (Princeton University Press, 1989).
He argues that the sequence of debt crisis that has punctuated Latin American history is attributable to cyclical instability in the creditor countries.
Ultimately, overextended investors are forced to retrench, provoking a cyclical downturn in the north and, with the simultaneous contraction of trade and lending, a debt crisis in the south.
[3] His more recently book publication is Nueva historia de las grandes crisis financieras, 1873-2008 (Random House Mondadori, 2010).