New Economic Thinking in Latin America

Extract

It is difficult to state positively whether truly ‘autonomous’ economic thinking has ever existed in Latin America. Nevertheless, even if this reservation is correct, some ‘autonomy’ has existed in such currents as structuralism and the dependency school. In both there are undeniable outside influences. In the first, there is a clear association with the Keynesian school which took over economic thought in the developed countries in the 1930s and led to aggressive state interventionism. In the second, the additional influence of Marxism is also evident. However, these currents in regional thought, together with the external influences mentioned, produced an interpretation of economic and social developments in the region which gave them a very autonomous character. They also demonstrated a great capacity to influence currents of thought outside Latin America. They were, in fact, one of the most important foundations of Third World thought, which developed and spread in the 1960s, and they have had a very noticeable impact on academic ideas in the northern hemisphere, although more especially in social sciences other than economics.