Creating Academic Economics in Brazil: The Ford Foundation and the Beginnings of ANPEC

Abstract

The 1960s saw the beginning of an effort to improve professional standards in Brazilian academia through cooperation with a few North American institutions, in the context of an important and controversial set of agreements between the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In the case of economics, the Ford Foundation was especially relevant, providing substantial funding for the creation of the first graduate programs in the field in Brazil. An important moment in this process took place in 1973 with the creation of ANPEC, an association of graduate programs in economics whose purpose was to organize and stimulate institutional interaction among its members. ANPEC is still today the most important association for academic economics in Brazil, exercising leadership through both its annual meetings and a national unified exam for admission in graduate programs in the field. The paper explores archival material from the period 1964-74 held at the Ford Foundation, which illuminates both the interaction between representatives of the Foundation and of different Brazilian academic institutions, and the strategy pursued by the former in order to develop the economics profession in the country. We thus seek to contribute to a better understanding of the conflicting motivations that lay behind the creation of ANPEC, and of the effects that the association would have on the emerging graduate programs in Brazil.

The Alliance for Progress, modernization theory, and the history of management education: The case of CEPAL in Brazil

“…The main source about the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was the testimony given by its first president (Herrera, 1985). Regarding the role of the FF in Latin America, the sources were its annual reports from 1959 to 1970, the literature on the activities of the foundation in the region (Chilcote, 2018; Fernández and Suprinyak, 2018; Holmes, 2013; Parmar, 2012) and its participation in management education (Cooke and Alcadipani, 2015), and two anniversary books from the FF (Brooke, 2002; Miceli, 1993).…”

“…The same took place in economics education where a combination of funds from USAID and the FF started in the early 1960s. Right through the decade “commitments in the area grew substantially in size, structure, and diversity, eventually turning into a full-fledged program for the social sciences in Brazil” (Fernández and Suprinyak, 2018: 6).…”

“…Although CEDT was not directly supported by the FF, the foundation issued different grants to the University of Ceará in the 1960s (FF, 1964(FF, -1970. The FF support to economics education at the University of Ceará has already been investigated, and a similar center for training economists was created around the same time (Fernández and Suprinyak, 2018).…”

‘ TAMA ’ economics under siege in Brazil: the threats of curriculum governance reform

“…Foreign institutions also played an important role in enabling pluralism in Brazilian economics. The Ford Foundation created an institutional space for economic research in Brazil in the 1960s, allowing different ideological clusters to coexist (Fernandez and Suprinyak, 2014). Specifically, the Foundation channeled its support into institutions that could produce specialized knowledge outside the confines of state bureaucracies, playing a strategic role in stimulating new areas of economics research, such as funding prodevelopment projects.…”