Abstract
In 2004, at the meeting of the World Economic Forum, Bill Clinton publicly declared that Hernando De Soto - founder and president of the Institute of Liberty and Democracy (ILD) in Lima and consultant to numerous heads of state - was "probably the world's most important living economist". He and ILD have been for the most part dedicating themselves to a question that already haunted the French economist Fernand Braudel: "Why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else?" De Soto claims he has found the answer. His book published in 2000, The Mystery of Capital, is setting out his argument: it is not a matter of wiping capitalism out but, on the opposite, to give Third World and former communist countries a chance to get the necessary conditions to benefit from it.
