In a recent discussion in a private forum with a group of friends I have been discussing why my home country is in trouble economically, even though we dollarized in 2001. My main argument is that the lack of continous reforms toward more freedom are the main reason why Ecuador is still in crisis.
Checking the index of economic freedom at Heritage Webpage in spanish or english (careful very large files), I found the following. Latin America appears together with Africa among the countries with less economic freedom. This is no surprise given that the Ecuador economic situation is in shambles. The only country among Latin America with a high ranking in freedom is Chile (13), very close to Sweden (12), Australia (11) and the USA (10)
There are other Latin American countries in the ranking high enough, but they are small countries with small development. It would take years of continous policies and capital accumulation to reach a state of welfare similar to the top 16. Among others, El Salvador (24), Bolivia (41), Costa Rica (50), Jamaica (56), Panamá (60)
Among the Latin countries that are less free are Venezuela (147), Cuba (144), Suriname (143), Haiti (137), Ecuador (126) (close to China by the way at position 128).
If you decide to download the file when you finish downloading it compare Ecuador with Chile and with Hong Kong. Any doubts on why Ecuador is in crisis, even with dollarization?
CATO has a competing version of the Index of Economic Freedom, the PDF's are lighter check here. Heritage's index is more user friendly but Cato's index to me is more precise although not very user friendly.
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