"From development to inflation. The 'creative destruction' of Argentine economics and the restoration of universal economic thought"

HEREDIA, MARIANA

Córdoba

Jornada; Social Sciences and Humanities in the changing North-South relations; 2015

InterCo Project & Universidad de Córdoba

By the early thirties, Latin American economic thought questioned the uniqueness of the capitalist world and emphasised the need to produce specific categories and theories to understand the realities and challenges of "peripheral" regions. In this framework, incipient Argentine economics constructed an original production that, in dialogue with European and American contributions, reinvigorated the reflection on the peculiarities of development in Latin America. With the persistence of inflation and the strengthening of ties between Argentine and American economists, most intellectual differences were reduced to a regional dispute between "heterodoxy" and "orthodoxy". Through archive analysis and interviews, this paper analyses the changing relations established among economists from the north and the south as well as the progressive passage of economics from a social science aiming to produce original knowledge to an increasing technical tool committed to adapt local institutions to "global" economy rules.