Raúl Prebisch in the context of "Third World"

⭐ In the context of the Third World, Raúl Prebisch’s work primarily contributed to understanding what aspect of its relationship with more developed nations?

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⭐ Core Definition: Raúl Prebisch

Raúl Prebisch (April 17, 1901 – April 29, 1986) was an Argentine economist known for his contributions to structuralist economics such as the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis, which formed the basis of economic dependency theory. He became the executive director of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA or CEPAL) in 1950. In 1950, he also released the very influential study The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems.

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👉 Raúl Prebisch in the context of Third World

The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the Southern Cone, Western European countries and other allies represented the "First World", while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and their allies represented the "Second World". This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political divisions. Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition of the Third World. Strictly speaking, "Third World" was a political, rather than economic, grouping.

Since most Third World countries were economically poor and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to developing countries as "third-world." In political discourse, the term Third World was often associated with being underdeveloped. China was labeled "Third World" for several decades in the 20th century before its robust development of the 21st century. Some countries in the Eastern Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as Third World. The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania, and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement. In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotônio dos Santos, and others, the Third World has also been connected to the world-systemic economic division as "periphery" countries dominated by the countries comprising the economic "core".

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Raúl Prebisch in the context of Import substitution industrialisation

Import substitution industrialization (ISI) is a protectionist trade and economic policy that advocates replacing foreign imports with domestic production. It is based on the premise that a country should attempt to reduce its foreign dependency through the local production of industrialized products. The term primarily refers to 20th-century development economics policies, but it has been advocated since the 18th century by economists such as Friedrich List and Alexander Hamilton.

ISI policies have been enacted by developing countries with the intention of producing development and self-sufficiency by the creation of an internal market. The state leads economic development by nationalization, subsidization of manufacturing, increased taxation, and highly protectionist trade policies. In the context of Latin American development, the term "Latin American structuralism" refers to the era of import substitution industrialization in many Latin American countries from the 1950s to the 1980s. The theories behind Latin American structuralism and ISI were organized in the works of economists such as Raúl Prebisch, Hans Singer, and Celso Furtado, and gained prominence with the creation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC or CEPAL). They were influenced by a wide range of Keynesian, communitarian, and socialist economic thought, as well as dependency theory.

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Raúl Prebisch in the context of Celso Furtado

Celso Monteiro Furtado (July 26, 1920 – November 20, 2004) was a Brazilian economist and one of the most distinguished intellectuals of the 20th century. His work focuses on development and underdevelopment and on the persistence of poverty in peripheral countries throughout the world. He is viewed, along with Raúl Prebisch, as one of the main formulators of economic structuralism, an economics school that is largely identified with CEPAL, which achieved prominence in Latin America and other developing regions during the 1960s and 1970s and sought to stimulate economic development through governmental intervention, largely inspired on the views of John Maynard Keynes. As a politician, Furtado was appointed Minister of Planning (Goulart government) and Minister of Culture (Sarney government).

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Raúl Prebisch in the context of Structuralist economics

Structuralist economics is an approach to economics that emphasizes the importance of taking into account structural features (typically) when undertaking economic analysis. The approach originated with the work of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA or CEPAL) and is primarily associated with its director Raúl Prebisch and Brazilian economist Celso Furtado. Prebisch began with arguments that economic inequality and distorted development was an inherent structural feature of the global system exchange. As such, early structuralist models emphasised both internal and external disequilibria arising from the productive structure and its interactions with the dependent relationship developing countries had with the developed world. Prebisch himself helped provide the rationale for the idea of import substitution industrialization, in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II. The alleged declining terms of trade of the developing countries, the Singer–Prebisch hypothesis, played a key role in this.

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Raúl Prebisch in the context of Prebisch–Singer hypothesis

In economics, the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis (also called the Prebisch–Singer thesis) argues that the price of primary commodities declines relative to the price of manufactured goods over the long term, which causes the terms of trade of primary-product-based economies to deteriorate. As of 2013, recent statistical studies have given support for the idea. The idea was developed by Raúl Prebisch and Hans Singer in the late 1940s; since that time, it has served as a major pillar of dependency theory and policies such as import substitution industrialization (ISI).

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