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A SECOND-GENERATION STRUCTURALIST TRANSFORMATION PROBLEM: THE RISE OF THE INERTIAL INFLATION HYPOTHESIS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2019

André Roncaglia de Carvalho Open the ORCID record for André Roncaglia de Carvalho [Opens in a new window]
André Roncaglia de Carvalho*
Affiliation:
Adjunct Professor at the Economics Department of the Federal University of São Paulo (EPPEN-UNIFESP)
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Abstract

The paper analyzes the rise of the Latin American-based inertial inflation theory. Starting in the 1950s, various traditions in economics purported to explain the concept of “inflation inertia.” Contributions ranging from Celso Furtado and Mário Henrique Simonsen to James Tobin anticipated key aspects of what later became the inertial inflation hypothesis, building it into either mathematical or conceptual frameworks compatible with the then contemporaneous macroeconomic theory. In doing so, they bridged the analytical gap with the North American developments while maintaining the key features of the CEPAL (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) approach, such as distributional conflicts and local institutional details. These contributions eventually influenced the second moment of the monetarist–structuralist controversy that unraveled in the 1980s. The paper also highlights how later works by structuralist economists gradually stripped the inertial inflation approach of its previous substance and form, thereby unearthing tensions among Latin American structuralists that led to the eventual decline of this research program.

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Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 47 - 75
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Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2019 

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Footnotes

The author is grateful for the comments made by two anonymous referees, as well as for valuable suggestions by Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Pedro Garcia Duarte on earlier versions of this paper. Remaining errors are my own.

References

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