Marco Antonio Ribas Cavalieri

Economic mainstream and power: a profile analysis of Central Bank directors during PSDB and PT governments in Brazil

This paper analyses the professional and educational backgrounds of members of the Board of Directors of Central Bank of Brazil in the period between the beginning of the first Fernando Henrique’s term and the end of Dilma Rousseff’s first term. The paper puts forward two novelties. First, a database synthesizing the information from the curricula of the abovementioned individuals. Second, modern literature in the field of methodology of economics is used to categorize the educational backgrounds of those individuals with education in economics. Our general findings point to a differentiation between two types of members in the Board of Directors. The first type is the one generally recruited for the positions concerned with organizational issues within the Bank, and the second is usually the one that occupies posts directly related to the decision making of economic policies. However, we did not identify significant differences between the types of individuals chosen by PSDB and PT governments.

O surgimento do institucionalismo norte-americano de Thorstein Veblen: economia política, tempo e lugar

Taking Thorstein Veblen as the author of an original system of political economy, this article explores the connections between the social context and the structure of his method and theory. Within this, two ideas take precedence: to approach the veblenian system predominately based on the introductory chapter of his 1914 book, The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of Industrial Arts, which is considered as the clearest exposure of his political economy; and, in compliance with a set of historical interpretations of his time and place, to show the structure of his methodological and theoretical proposal as a reflex of these contextual conditions.