Economic Planning the Chicago Way: The Case of CENDEC in Brazil, 1965-70

Carlos Suprinyak

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Since incorporating Latin America into its foreign assistance portfolio in the early 1960s, the Ford Foundation typically privileged working with academic institutions and private think tanks over direct collaborations with government agencies. In 1966, however, the Foundation departed from this policy to extend a grant to the recently inaugurated Center for Training and Research in Economic Development (CENDEC), an advanced training unit for economists operated by the Brazilian Ministry of Planning and Economic Coordination. Ostensibly designed to provide applied training in the tools of economic planning to government technicians, CENDEC was directed by Og Francisco Leme, the first Brazilian economist to obtain a graduate degree in Economics from the University of Chicago. Under Leme's leadership, the Center quickly became a Chicago enclave within the Brazilian economics community, responsible for recruiting a regular flow of local economists who went to Chicago to pursue their graduate studies. The paper will explore the motivations behind the creation of CENDEC, the reasons why the Ford Foundation was interested in this initiative, and the tensions created by Leme's reliance on Chicago as a privileged partner institution. We will use this episode to shed further light on the ambivalent relationship between the Ford Foundation and the Brazilian military regime, and to highlight the diverse array of forces shaping the early development of Brazilian economics.

Keywords: Economic planning; Chicago school of economics; Ford Foundation; Brazilian economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09-27
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