This book explores peripheral visions on economic development, both in the sense that it deals with specific issues of economic development and underdevelopment in countries at the periphery of the world economy, and in terms of its exploration of the economic thinking developed in those regions, particularly in Latin America. Bringing together an international group of historians of thought, economic historians and development economists from Latin America, Europe and other parts of the world, this volume is highly credited and is an excellent contribution to development economic studies. This book is divided into four parts. Following the introduction, the first set of papers describes the evolution of core-periphery perspectives in key contributions by Raúl Prebisch, Oskar Lange, Albert Hirschman, Celso Furtado and Homero Cuevas. The second set discusses the links between unbalanced productive structures and external trade in peripheral countries. The third set contains papers on critical episodes in the development of monetary and financial systems in Latin America during the 19th and 20th centuries. The fourth set deals with geographical and institutional aspects of path dependence in the governance of external trade and in the development of liberties, property rights and economic education in Europe, Latin America and Africa. Several chapters make use of hitherto unexplored archival material. Other chapters draw attention to important episodes or literatures that have largely gone unnoticed in the English-speaking world. Yet others combine conceptual innovations with work on new historical data and other sources hitherto not utilized in such contexts. This book is ideal for those who study and research development economics, history of economic thought and economic history, especially in Latin America.

This edited volume examines the relationship between economic ideas, economic policies and development institutions, analysing the cases of 11 peripheral countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It sheds light on the obstacles that have prevented the sustained economic growth of these countries and examines the origins of national and regional approaches to development. The chapters present a fascinating insight into the ideas and visions in the different locations, with the overarching categories of economic nationalism and economic liberalism and how they have influenced development outcomes. This book will be valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of development economics, the history of economic thought and economic history.

Much of our understanding of local economic development is based on large urban agglomerations as nodes of innovation and competitive advantage, connecting territories to global value chains. However, this framework cannot so easily be applied to peripheral regions and secondary cities in either the Global South or the North. This book proposes an alternative way of looking at local economic development based on the idea of fragile governance and three variables: associations and networks; learning processes; and leadership and conflict management in six Latin American peripheral regions. The case studies illustrate the challenges of governance in small and intermediate cities in Latin America, and showcase strategies that are being used to achieve a more resilient and territorial vision of local economic development. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of local economic development, urban and regional studies, and political economy in Latin America as well as to policy-makers and practitioners interested in local and regional economic development policy.

Thus, the United States became involved militarily in various Third World conflicts more to deter the Soviet Union than to protect any specific U.S. interest. Peripheral Visions argues that this policy was unnecessary and counterproductive.

In Portugal between 2005 and 2010, “modernization through technology” was the major political motto used to develop and improve the country’s peripheral and backward condition. This study reflects on one of the resulting, specific aspects of this trend—the implementation of public video surveillance. The in-depth ethnography provides evidence of how the political construction of security and surveillance as a strategic program actually conceals intricate institutional relationships between political decision-makers and common citizens. Essentially, the detailed account of the major actors, as well as their roles and motivations, serves to explain phenomena such as the confusion between objective data and subjective perceptions or the lack of communication between parties, which as this study argues, underlies the idiosyncrasies and fragilities of Portugal’s still relatively young democratic system.

Paul Samuelson was at the heart of a revolution in economics. He was "the foremost academic economist of the 20th century," according to the New York Times, and the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. His work transformed the field of economics and helped give it the theoretical and mathematic rigor that increased its influence in business and policy making. In Founder of Modern Economics, Roger E. Backhouse explores the central importance of Samuelson's personality and social networks to understanding his intellectual development. This is the first of two volumes covering Samuelson's extended and productive life and career. This volume surveys Samuelson's early years growing up in the Midwest to his experiences at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, where leading scholars in economics and other disciplines stimulated and rewarded his curiosity. His thinking was influenced by the natural sciences and he understood that a critical, scientific approach increased insights into important social and economic questions. He realized that these questions could not be answered through rhetorical debate but required rigor. His "eureka" moment came, he said, when "a good fairy whispered to me that math was a skeleton key to solve age old problems in economics." Backhouse traces Samuelson's thinking from his early days to the publication of his groundbreaking book Foundations of Economic Analysis and Economics: An Introductory Analysis, which influenced generations of students. His work set the stage for economics to become a more cohesive and coherent discipline, based on mathematical techniques that provided surprising insights into many important topics, from business cycles to wage and unemployment rates, and from how competition influences trade to how tax rates affects tax collection. Founder of Modern Economics is a profound contribution to understanding how modern economics developed and the thinking of a revolutionary thinker.

Ever since the quest for independence between 1810 and 1819, economic thought in Colombia has been shaped by policy debates and characterized by a pragmatic and eclectic approach. Economic thought in Colombia can only be revealed through the exploration of economists’ practices and the role of economic arguments within broader public debate. This history of Colombian economic thought provides a detailed account of major issues that have marked the constant feedback between economic ideas and economic practice in Colombia during the 19th and 20th centuries. This volume is thus a history of the interaction between ideas and policy. Those involved in these debates – politicians, public officials, journalists, and, latterly, professional economists – established direct contact with what can be identified as the centers of production of economic theory (both in Europe and the US) and entered regional and local networks in economics, but were not just importers of ideas or theories. The way in which they read, discussed, transformed and applied economic theories in Colombia makes for a rich environment for the production and implementation of economic policies that drew, diverged and transformed the way economics was understood and used as a source of knowledge for practical concerns. This is why the history of Colombian economic thought does not fit into traditional typologies of economic schools and why it must be understood as part of a political debate and within a political, social and cultural context that demanded specific solutions to urgent social demands. Through the study of what was taught, when and how, at the beginnings of the republican era, and why and how professional economists came to lead public debate and economic policy making in the 20th century, this book explores the foundations of this permanent interaction between theory and practice. This book will be of significant interest to readers of history of economic thought, economic history and the history of Colombian and Latin American economic, political and social life more broadly.