2017 – current
The Institutionalization of Academic Economics in Brazil, 1960-1980
Abstract: The development of economics as an academic discipline is only a recent chapter of Brazilian history. Gathering speed from the middle of the 1960s onwards, the process led to an accelerated institutionalization of the economics profession, benefiting from generous resources channeled by North American foreign policy institutions, philanthropic foundations and centers of higher education. The Ford Foundation was profoundly involved, for around two decades, in the creation and consolidation of several Brazilian programs for graduated training and research in economics, which are still today recognized as among the most successful in the country. The engagement of North American institutions, however, took place under the aegis of the military regime that ruled the country between 1964 and 1985. In its policy for education, the regime insisted in the use of the social sciences as an instrument for creating a class of experts that could offer politically neutral advice. The project analyses this process of institutional creation and adaptation against the Brazilian sociopolitical and intellectual context, and within the framework of U.S.-Latin American relations during the Cold War.
Funding: CNPq (401050/2016-5) and Fapemig (CSA APQ-03560-16)
2011 – current
Public Debates and Economic Discourse in Tudor and Stuart England
Abstract: The project analyses the state and evolution of the economic ideas circulating in the English public sphere during the early modern period. Taking the public debates around the early 1620s commercial crisis as a reference point, the goal is to explore the relationship between the economic ideas presented in a systematic fashion in the pamphlets of Thomas Mun, Gerard de Malynes and Edward Misselden, on one hand, and the larger attitude of English society toward economic phenomena, on the other. Three aspects will be the subject of special consideration: the participation of prominent public figures such as Francis Bacon, Edward Coke and Lionel Cranfield in the investigations on the causes of the 1620s crisis; public discussions on monetary problems during the reign of Elizabeth, and their influence in the early 17th century; the short and medium term influence exerted by the 1620s debates on English public opinion.
Funding: CNPq (400959/2011-9)
2017 – current
Economics, Political Economy and the building of the European Integration Project
Abstract: The project purports to recover the intellectual roots of European integration in the interwar and early postwar years, giving special emphasis to the role played by economists in this process. European economists were, at the time, very much involved in debates about international politics, as evidenced by the cases of Lionel Robbins, Gunnar Myrdal, François Perroux, William Beveridge, Walter Eucken, Robert Triffin, and John Maynard Keynes, to cite only a few prominent examples. Moreover, this was an area in which economists did not speak strictly from their disciplinary perspective, but rather interacted in a transdisciplinary environment comprising other social scientists with quite different intellectual backgrounds. The period thus offers a privileged vantage point from which to discern the ongoing demarcation of boundaries between economics and political economy. Finally, we can also extend this perspective to interpret how the field of International Political Economy later appropriated itself of some of the themes that lay within the province of economists until a few decades earlier, and how this led to the emergence of new approaches to similar problems. By reconnecting these threads, the project will show how the revived and enlarged perspective of political economy can illuminate some of the challenges currently facing the European Union. The international team assembled for the proposal, gathering renowned experts on the history of economics, law, and international politics in 20th-century Europe, is particularly well-suited for the task at hand.
Funding: European Commission (Jean Monnet Chair EPEbEIP)
2015 – 2018
Theory and Policy in the Formation of the European Union: a model for regional integration?
Abstract: The aim of this project is twofold. First, it intends to foster the analysis of the historical circumstances surrounding the birth of the European Union, focusing in particular on the interplay between theories and concepts of regional integration, on one hand, and the political, institutional, and economic forces that underpinned the process, on the other. Secondly, it will use this knowledge in a comparative analysis of other recent experiences of integration, attempting to illuminate how strategies that share the same rationale can lead to widely diverging results due to the different socio-institutional contexts in which they are applied – thus alerting to the dangers of a hasty adoption of imported models.
Funding: European Commission (Jean Monnet Module ThePoEu)
2013 – 2016
Marx and the Notebooks on Crises
Abstract: The project uses Notebook B113, composed by Karl Marx in 1869, as a window into the elaboration of the Marxian theory of crises. Notebook B113 is one of Marx’s unpublished manuscripts, integrating the Marx-Engels Archives at the International Institute of Social History, in Amsterdam. The transcription of its contents and study of their use by Marx when writing the three volumes of Capital is a powerful instrument for understanding his investigations into the financial crisis of 1866. It will thus establish the basis for a large program of research on Marx’s later theoretical works, and on the role of crises as recurrent phenomena in capitalist societies.
Funding: CNPq (484849/2013-1)