Ramon Garcia Fernandez

Creating academic economics in Brazil: the Ford Foundation and the beginnings of ANPEC

The 1960s saw the beginning of an effort to improve professional standards in Brazilian academia through cooperation with a few North American institutions, in the context of an important and controversial set of agreements between the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In the case of economics, the Ford Foundation was especially relevant, providing substantial funding for the creation of the first graduate programs in the field in Brazil. An important moment in this process took place in 1973 with the creation of ANPEC, an association of graduate programs in economics whose purpose was to organize and stimulate institutional interaction among its members. ANPEC is still today the most important association for academic economics in Brazil, exercising leadership through both its annual meetings and a national unified exam for admission in graduate programs in the field. The paper explores archival material from the period 1964-74 held at the Ford Foundation, which illuminates both the interaction between representatives of the Foundation and of different Brazilian academic institutions, and the strategy pursued by the former in order to develop the economics profession in the country. We thus seek to contribute to a better understanding of the conflicting motivations that lay behind the creation of ANPEC, and of the effects that the association would have on the emerging graduate programs in Brazil.

Funding Policy Research Under “Distasteful Regimes”: the Ford Foundation and the Social Sciences at the University of Brasília

The Ford Foundation’s initial effort to assist in the development of the social sciences in Brazil coincided with the early years of the military regime that ruled the country between 1964 and 1985. Given the Foundation’s expressed goal of fostering research that was of potential relevance for public policy, the Brazilian political context posed a difficult dilemma. The issue came to the forefront amid discussions over a proposal for the creation of a Master’s Program in Economics at the University of Brasilia (UnB). Although UnB’s modern institutional structure was ideally suited for the Foundation’s purposes, the university had been subject to repeated military interventions in late 1960’s. Moreover, its geographical closeness to the seat of Brazilian political power arose concerns that it could become an instrument in the hands of the military government. Using evidence from the Ford Foundation archives, the paper attempts to illuminate the institutional context surrounding the development of academic economics in Brazil in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in its relations to the deeper social and political currents in effect at the time.