This paper describes briefly the main alternatives to the dominant neoclassical theories of inflation, according to which inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. The model develops a cost-push approach, in which raising costs are mainly related to external constraints. Distributive conflict...

Conventional wisdom about the business cycle in Latin America assumes that monetary shocks cause deviations from the optimal path, and that the triggering factor in the cycle is excess credit and liquidity. Further, in this view the origin of the contraction is ultimately related to the excesses...

This paper reviews the various explanations for inflation and the relation between inflation and money aggregates. Two analytical distinctions are useful to understand different explanations of inflationary processes of all types. First, and more importantly, theories can be seen as cost-push or...

This paper deals with the role of economic ideas in institutional development. Conventional wisdom in Brazilian historiography suggests that, in part, the relative backwarderness of Brazil with respect to the United States was the result of the economic liberalism of its elites, represented by...

The debt crisis of the early 1980s prompted several analyses that emphasized the negative role of fiscal deficits on economic development. This negative view of fiscal deficits was consolidated in the so-called Washington Consensus agenda. International financial crises – recurrent in a world...

The Gold Standard was an asymmetrical system, with different rules of the game for the Center and the Periphery. The periphery was for most of the time off the gold standard system, and effectively in an exchange-gold system. This paper will analyze the main effects of this hybrid system on the...