Six months ago, with Venezuela hurtling toward calamity, one of its most renowned economists living in exile assembled a group of scholars with a decidedly unacademic goal: to save the country. Ricardo Hausmann, 60, a Harvard professor and former government minister, brought together monetary experts, oil engineers and sociologists.
One key player was excluded: Francisco Rodriguez, 46, a widely read economist, himself a Harvard Ph.D., who co-edited a book with Hausmann and once viewed him as a mentor. Stung by the rejection, Rodriguez, now chief economist at Torino Capital, an emerging-market investment bank in New York, has pushed forward his own view on how to pull the country back from the brink.
