ECLAC Promotes Gathering of Structuralist Youth in Brazil

In 2018, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) celebrates 70 years in existence. This motivated its office in Brazil to bring together in a book a new generation influenced by structuralist thinking to discuss alternatives for the country.

The gathering together of Brazilian “structuralist youth” in this book shows that, despite the context of major transformations in the international economy and the profound uncertainties stemming from the current Brazilian crisis, structuralist thinking continues to be proactive since alternatives exist for building development with more equality. The path of austerity and a smaller State, and the consequent amplification of external, economic, social and political vulnerabilities, is sometimes presented as the only path, but new horizons for the country’s development can be proposed.

The book is composed of a set of essays produced by teachers and experts in the area of economic and political sciences, who seek to contribute ideas for Brazil’s development. The guiding theme of the publication is the search for fronts of expansion in the economy in social and environmental areas, which add dynamic aspects (associated with investment and demand stimuli, generating income and employment) to complementary industrial policies that can have implications for the productive structure, in the sense of creating a more complex industrial fabric. The combination of these policies, with social and environmental aims, must promote a structural change with active actions for equality, which in turn also has dynamic implications that would allow for sustaining growth.

It is with this integrated focus on macro, industrial, social and environmental policies that the chapters, and the new horizons for Brazilian development, are organized. The production of the chapters took place at a seminar in Brasilia on Abril 5-6, 2018, with the presence of all the authors, who over the course of two days debated their proposals with an audience of nearly 40 experts. The expectation is that the book be published between November and December 2018.