Pinochet's Economists: The Chicago School of Economics in Chile

by Juan Gabriel Valdes

Overview

This book tells the extraordinary story of the Pinochet regime's economists, known as the Chicago Boys. Following their training as economists at the University of Chicago, they took advantage of the opportunity afforded them by the 1973 military coup to launch the first radical free market strategy implemented in a developing country. The ideological strength of their mission and the military authoritarianism of General Pinochet combined to transform an economy that, following the return to democracy, has stabilized and is now seen as a model for Latin America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521451468
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/17/1995
Series:	Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.06(d)

Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Authoritarians Without a Project; 2. Ideological Transfer; 3. The Chicago School of Economics; 4. The Actors of ideological Transfer; 5. The Contracts between ICA, Chicago and the Universidad Católica; 6. The Chile Project and the Birth of the Chicago Boys; 7. The Implantation of the Chicago School in Chile; 8. The Export of the Chicago Tradition; 9. In Search of Politics; 10 The Elusive Hegemony; 11. Under the Unidad Popular; Conclusions.

Editorial Reviews

"Valdés, who is deeply critical of the Chicago School for its lack of social content and its influence in Chilean public life, has written an important history of an elite group of economists and their allies among Chile's conservative business elite." American Historical Review

"Based on extensive research in the archives of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Agency of International Development, the book shows how the transmission of sconomic ideas was encouraged and fostered..." Foreign Affairs

"Pinochet's Economists gives a fascinating account of the conditions favoring ideological transfer, the specific events and actors involved in it, and the conditions that facilitated the initial flourishing and subsequent reproduction of neoliberalism in Chile." Latin American Research Review

"... a well-documented and well-argued book on the very interesting and important experience of the Chicago Boys, the international transfer of ideas, and the efforts of intellectuals to shape basic social and economic policies by using those ideas." The Annals of the American Academy

"...god examples of Americanists...whose work takes in more of the Amaericas." Brian Finnegan, American Studies International

From the Publisher