Raúl Prébisch

Raúl Federico Prébisch Linares (San Miguel de Tucumán, April 17, 1901 – Santiago de Chile, April 29, 1986) was an Argentine politician, academic and economist, recognized for his contributions to the structuralist theory of economic development. In 1923 he began his activities as a university professor and, as a public official, he advised the economic policies of the conservative governments of the 1930s, being General Manager of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, founded in 1935. In 1947 he joined the Economic Commission for Latin America, an institution of which he was Executive Secretary between 1950 and 1963. After the overthrow of the government of Juan Domingo Perón, the de facto president Eduardo Lonardi commissioned him to write a preliminary report. on the Argentine economic situation, where he recommended, among others, structural adjustment measures and the country's inclusion in the International Monetary Fund. After his resignation from the direction of ECLAC, he assumed the position of Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

On the intellectual level, Prébisch's work is fundamental in the formulation of the economic theory known as structuralism or developmentalism, a Latin American contribution to research on the conditions of economic development. In an article published in El Trimestre Economía in 1949 exposed the growing inequality of commercial relations between the powers of the center and the peripheral regions. His ideas would later be expressed in the notion of a center-periphery Structure and a deterioration in the terms of trade, also called the Prébisch-Singer thesis.

Biography

His father, Albin Teodoro Prebisch, was a Protestant German farmer from Colmnitz (Saxony, near Dresden), middle class and with a strongly entrepreneurial spirit, who had arrived in Jujuy, Argentina, as a representative of the mail system between the provinces and the capital of the couriers; Her mother, Rosa Linares Uriburu, belonged to a traditional Salta family. She had seven siblings: Amalia, María Luisa, Ernesto, Julio, Alberto, Rosa Elvira and Lucía, who would have an expectant role in the field of culture and intellectual circles in northern Argentina. Her sister Amalia Prebisch was a renowned poet in Tucumán, married to Adolfo Piossek, leader of the National Democratic Party, who was rector of the National University of Tucumán. Her brother Julio Prebisch was a university reformist leader, who also presided over the rectorate of said university. For his part, Alberto Prebisch was a renowned architect who worked on monuments and emblematic buildings in Tucumán and Buenos Aires. His mother was a relative of Enrique Uriburu, who was private secretary of the de facto dictator, José Felix Uriburu, in addition to serving as Minister of Finance, between 1930 and 1932.

He finished his secondary studies in Tucumán, and studied public accounting at the University of Buenos Aires between 1918 and 1921. In 1923 he began his teaching work as a professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. Aires, chair that he held until 1948.

Political career

With the coup d'état of September 6, 1930, the dictator Uriburu took office, taking him to the Undersecretariat of Finance, beginning almost a decade and a half of activity. During the Infamous Decade at the beginning of 1933 he advised Pinedo, Minister of Finance, Duhau, Minister of Agriculture, and was general manager of the BCRA since its creation in May 1935.

On May 1, 1933, the Roca-Runciman pact was signed. Prebisch, Roca's advisor, stated: "I continue to believe, and I can demonstrate to whoever I want, that the agreement was the only thing that could be done to protect Argentine exports from the disaster of the great global recession. It was not a dynamic agreement. It was a defense agreement, in an international economic world that was contracting. The organizational capacity, vitality and personality of Prebisch, manager of the BCRA, was exceptional. He is considered a very prominent and highly exposed official of the & # 34; infamous decade & # 34; He had to resign on June 4, 1943 after the coup d'état.

Between 1930 and 1943 he worked as a public official at Banco Nación and then at the Ministry of Finance. Starting in 1935 he was one of the founders and first General Manager of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, a position he held until 1943.

ECLAC and UNCTAD

Between 1950 and 1963 he was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC). Later, he served as Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Prébisch Plan

Between October 1955 and January 1956, he prepared, for the de facto government of the Liberating Revolution, a diagnosis of the economic situation in Argentina and an action plan to resolve the economic problems. The proposal, which included the country's incorporation into the International Monetary Fund, produced widespread rejection by all political forces. Perhaps its only result was the creation of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology. In this regard, Arturo Jauretche publishes the essay The Prebisch Plan: return to colonialism, refuting the report that Raúl Prebisch had written at the request of the Pedro Eugenio Aramburu regime. The harshness of his opposition would earn him political persecution and exile in Montevideo.

Recent years

In 1984 he returned to Argentina to collaborate in the government of Raúl Alfonsín, who emerged from the polls in 1983 as an economic advisor. He died in Santiago, Chile, in April 1986.

Distinctions

In 1973 he was named honorary doctor by the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). In 1986 the Konex Foundation posthumously awarded him the Konex Honor Award, for his contribution to the history of the humanities in Argentina.

Contributions

He wrote numerous works, among which are Introduction to Keynes (1947); The economic development of Latin America and some of its main problems (1949), considered by Albert Hirschman as the Latin-American Manifesto propelled him to the Executive Secretariat of ECLAC; Theoretical and practical problems of economic growth (1951); Towards a dynamic of Latin American development (1963 report to ECLAC); Transformation and development: the great task of Latin America (1970); Peripheral capitalism: crisis and transformation (1981).

Together with Hans Singer, he is the creator of the Prebisch-Singer thesis, which postulates a continuous deterioration in the real terms of trade of primary economies, normally peripheral, based on the fact that the demand for manufactured products grows much faster than that of raw materials. To reverse this trend, Import Substitution Industrialization, also known as ISI, was devised.

Together with Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Rosario Green as coordinator, he wrote Entourage of the state and development.

In an interview with journalists Neustadt and Juan Alemann, his developmental thinking was expressed in the following quote:

What is the problem of inflation in the background? The U.S., because of its enormous potential, became the illusion that they could do many things at the same time: a significant increase in consumption, national and international investments of transnational corporations and a heavy spending on armaments that absorbs 7% of the national product. Vietnam's expenditure, between $100,000 and $120 billion, accentuated relatively mild inflation until then. To finance such expenditure, other financial sources were not used for understandable political reasons. In addition, the political and trade union power of the labour force that wants to share the increase in productivity and defend its income has developed in good time. We are in social inflation that differs from the previous one and has no correction within the system. There is neither monetary policy nor in the centre nor in the periphery that can contain such inflation. We are living in a system of accumulation and distribution of income that is the result of shocks of forces and power relations and not a rational plan to distribute these resources according to the collective needs. Which does not have to interfere with economic freedom. I'm horrified by the state that handles everything. And he deals with it because he has to put patches on all those aspects in which the malfunction of the system leads him to intervene. Why? Because he abstains from intervening in the fundamental data: the accumulation and distribution of which we speak. ".

Raúl Prebisch.

Work

• Introduction to Keynes1947.
• The economic development of Latin America and some of its main problems1949.
• Growth, imbalance and disparities: interpretation of the economic development process1950.
• Theoretical and practical problems of economic growth1951.
• International cooperation in Latin American development policy1954.
• Towards a dynamic of Latin American development1963.
• New trade policy for development1964.
• Towards a global development strategy1968.
• Transformation and development. The Great Task of Latin America1970.
• Peripheral capitalism. Crisis and transformation1981.
• Five stages of my thinking on development1983.