(1930-2024)Maria da Conceição Tavares passed away last Sunday. She was among the key thinkers of the Latin American Structuralist School, often associated with the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). In her case, Anibal Pinto, who was her teacher in a ECLA course in the early 1960s, and Celso Furtado, who was never formally her teacher, were her major influences. She was instrumental in introducing Kalecki in Brazilian academic circles, and in her debate with Furtado on the...
Read More »Prebisch After ECLAC and UNCTAD
[embedded content]My talk at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia last Friday, in Spanish of course. Part of the argument is that Prebisch, contrary to what is often assumed, moved from an argument that emphasized the role of the external constraint in leading to underdevelopment during his United Nations years, to one that put the emphasis on the patterns of domestic consumption, and its negative impact on the surplus, following the literature on stagnation, in his last book on peripheral...
Read More »Esteban Pérez on John Maynard Keynes
One of my favorite economists, and John Maynard Keynes too. Don't miss this lecture, in Spanish of course, on one of the central economists of the 20th century and its relevance for the periphery, particularly during the current pandemic. I'll post links to the Zoom and Facebook stream soon.
Read More »Raúl Prebisch as a Central Banker and Money Doctor
Here we edited with Esteban Pérez and Miguel Torres some unpublished manuscripts from Prebisch related to the Federal Reserve missions, led by Robert Triffin, to the Dominican Republic and Paraguay, in which he emphasizes the need of capital controls in peripheral countries that did NOT have the key hegemonic currency. There is also a discussion of Keynes and White's plans for Bretton Woods, which were partially published before. In Spanish. Happy New Year!
Read More »Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean´s (ECLAC) Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean (“Dynamics of the current economic cycle and policy challenges for boosting investment and growth”) for 2016-2017 was published last Thursday (3 of August). It incorporates a number of heterodox concepts and ideas mainly in Part II. These include the notion of center and periphery (which provides the framework for Chapter III “The region’s current economic cycle and...
Read More »Angus Deaton wins the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
For his work on "consumption, poverty and welfare" according to the press release. It wasn't Atkinson, for inequality, as I suggested it was possible, but given the other possibilities cited this is quite good. Deaton had received last year the Leontief prize, which usually goes to heterodox economists (the other Nobel to win the Leontief was Sen), together with Jamie Galbraith.I should say, I recently read his The Great Escape. An interesting book, full of relevant data. But it does...
Read More »Macroeconomics, mainstream and heterodox approaches
An interview with Esteban Pérez Caldentey in Tan Cerca/Tan Lejos, a radio program produced at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. First half in English, second one in Spanish.
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