ECLAC and the new growth theories

Includes bibliography

Institute of Economics, Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, University of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay. Gabriel Porcile Fabio Scatolin Professors, Department of Economics, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil. This article reviews various different growth models, with emphasis on the interactions between economies with differing degrees of technological development. It takes as its starting point the proposals put forward by ECLAC in the 1950s (section II);; as subsequent proposals by ECLAC in the 1980s and 1990s have incorporated various contributions made by more recent models it may be asserted that the evolution of ECLAC's ideas likewise illustrates the evolution of economic growth theory in general. It then goes on to analyse endogenous growth models with monopolistic competition conditions of the neoclassical school (section III);, presents Schumpeterian models of what has been called the "evolutionary school" (section IV);, and describes the thinking of the "new ECLAC" of the 1980s and 1990s and its conceptual and propositional renewal (section V);. It then compares the different models and approaches analysed in the light of some aspects considered to be of key importance, such as the role assigned to endogenous technical progress in explaining long-term economic growth, the way the different conceptions of technology condition the nature of public intervention to promote development, and the validity of the concepts of bipolarity and/or international divergence with respect to the long-term growth rates of the per capita product (section VI);. The final considerations (section VII); contain some reflections on aspects relating to development policies, both from the standpoint of the various approaches reviewed earlier and from that of the special structural features typical of the Latin American economies.