Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira
Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, Juca Pato Award 2015
Born	(1934-06-30) 30 June 1934 (age 90) São Paulo, Brazil
Academic career
Institution	Getulio Vargas Foundation
School or tradition	Development economics, Post-Keynesian macroeconomics
Alma mater	University of São Paulo
Influences	Karl Marx, Max Weber, John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Celso Furtado, Nicholas Kaldor, Ignácio Rangel
Contributions	Inertial inflation, new developmentalism, technobureaucracy
Awards	Emeritus Professor, Getulio Vargas Foundation (2005) Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Buenos Aires (2010) James Street Scholar, Association for Evolutionary Economics (2012)
Website	http://www.bresserpereira.org.br

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira (born 30 June 1934) is a Brazilian economist and social scientist. He teaches at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo since 1959. In1981, he founded the Brazilian Journal of Political Economy and since then is its editor.

Bresser-Pereira served as the Minister of Finance of Brazil in 1987, under the presidency of José Sarney, and helped propose what would eventually become the Brady Plan which solved the country's foreign debt crisis.^[1] He also led the Ministry of Federal Administration and Reform of the State (MARE) from 1995 to 1998 and was Minister of Science and Technology in 1999. His career as an economist was largely focused on theoretical questions such as developmentalism, development macroeconomics, methodological critique of neoclassical economics, the theory of the democratic, social, and developmental state, and on the critique of neoliberalism. He also had an interest in applied questions relating to the economy of Brazil and its society.

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira was born in 1934 in São Paulo. He received a bachelor's degree in Law from the University of São Paulo (1957), an MBA from Michigan State University in 1960, and a PhD (1974) and livre-docência [pt] in Economics (1984) from the University of São Paulo. He taught at the Getulio Vargas Foundation from 1962. He was visiting professor at Pantheon-Sorbonne University (1977), at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (2003–2010), and at the University of São Paulo (1989 and 2002–2003). He was also visiting fellow at Nuffield College and St Antony's College, Oxford in 1999 and 2001.

From 1963 to 1982, while maintaining his academic roles, he was vice-president of Grupo Pão de Açúcar which by 1982 had become the largest retail chain in Brazil. In 1983, when Brazil was beginning to democratize, he entered public office, first as president of the Bank of the State of São Paulo (1983–1984). In 1985 and 1986, he was Chief of Staff of the Governor of São Paulo, André Franco Montoro. In 1987, he became Minister of Finance in the José Sarney administration. After leaving the ministry, he was a founding member of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). Between 1995 and 1998, he was the head of the MARE, and in 1999 Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, both under the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration. After 1999 he returned full-time to academia. In 2010 he left the PSDB, arguing that the political party had turned conservative.

In 1987 he took over the Brazilian Ministry of Finance at a moment of deep crisis that followed the failure of the Cruzado Plan: inflation reached 15% a month, while both firms and Brazil's states went bankrupt.^[2] Negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the fiscal adjustments that their proposals would entail were seen by the politicians in power as unacceptable. Nevertheless, Bresser-Pereira prepared a "Macroeconomic Adjustment Plan", which included measures necessary to control inflation. Second, he prepared and adopted what came to be known as the Bresser Plan, which was ultimately not successful.^[3]

Third, he developed a plan based on the securitization of foreign debt, based on measures New York City had taken to bring its debt under control in the 1970s. This approach would have largely excluded commercial banks and the IMF, but it was rejected by US Treasury Secretary James Baker. Nevertheless 18 months later it was taken up by Baker's successor, Nicholas F. Brady, and it was the Brady Plan that brought Brazil's foreign debt crisis to a close.^[4]

With the election of Fernando Henrique Cardoso to the presidency of Brazil, Bresser-Pereira took charge of the Ministry of Federal Administration and Reform of the State (MARE).^[a] He developed a white paper, "Plano Diretor da Reforma do Aparelho do Estado" (English: 'Master Plan for the Reform of the State Apparatus'), which offered a theoretical framework for public sector reform based on managerial principles, distinguishing three sectors – (a) the strategic core of the state, (b) the exclusive activities involving state power, and (c) the non-exclusive activities, mostly universal services, that the state provides – and proposed a different managerial treatment for each sector. He also created the social organizations – non-profit type of organization recognized by the state in each case that was mainly used to run hospitals, museums, research institutes, and in a lesser extent univeristies. On the other hand, based on the New Public Management (NPM), which was developed a few years before in Britain, Bresser-Pereira defined some new management strategies: management by results, competition for excellence between state organizations, and formal systems of social accountability. The reforms he led in 1998 became an international benchmark of their type.^[5] The books and papers that Bresser-Pereira wrote on the subject^[6] have become a main element in courses on public administration offered by Brazilian universities.^[2] Several master's and PhD dissertations have been written on the reform.^[7][8] While at the MARE, Bresser-Pereira was also president of the Latin American Center for the Administration of Development (Portuguese: Centro Latino Americano de Administração para o Desenvolvimento; CLAD) between 1995 and 1997. During his term, he gave a Latin American dimension to managerial reform,^[9] and with the same objective he organized the first yearly congress of CLAD, which is today^[when?] the organization's key activity.^[b]

At the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Bresser-Pereira defined the policy of transforming the research funds originated from the recently privatized state-owned enterprises into Sectorial Funds attached to the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development. In order to achieve better integration between the Ministry and its main agency, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), he also presided over the agency. Bresser-Pereira unified the academic curriculum vitae (CV) that the Federal Government requires for the evaluation of researchers under the Lattes Platform.^[c]

Bresser-Pereira has taught economics at the Getulio Vargas Foundation since 1962, where he became Professor Emeritus in 2005.^[10] In 1996 at the foundation in São Paulo, he created the first master's program for business administration in Brazil. He founded and has been the editor of the Brazilian Journal of Political Economy since 1981.^[11][12] He is a frequent contributor to newspapers, particularly to Folha de S.Paulo. His main contributions to economic theory are the historical model of growth and distribution with three types of technical progress, the theory of inertial inflation, a methodological critique to neoclassical economics, and the theories and models forming new developmentalism and developmental macroeconomics. In political and social theory he worked on the rise of the technobureaucratic or professional class, on the theory of the modern state, and on the relation between democracy and economic development or the capitalist revolution. Since 2001 he has been involved in defining new developmentalism – a project involving macroeconomics, a political economy, and a draft of microeconomics.^[13]

Interpretation of Brazil. Mainly in The Political Construction of Brazil (Lynne Riener Publishers, 2017)^[14] and “ ###”. Brazil industrialized fast from 1930 and 2080. From then on the economy is quasi stagnant. Racism is the main social problem. Democracy, always under threat, is consolidated.

The rise of the managerial or technobureaucratic social class. Mainly in Technobureaucratic Capitalism (in the authors website). Modified translation of A Sociedade Estatal e a Tecnoburocracia (Editora Brasiliense, 1981). The rise of the managerial class in the West and in communist societies.

On the falling tendency of the rate of profit. Mainly in  Lucro, Acumulação and Crise [Profit, Accumulation and Crisis] (Editora Brasiliense, 1986) and “Growth and distribution: a revised classical model" (2018).^[15] Marx’s falling tendency in the rate of profit adopted to discuss technical progress and the phases of capitalist development.

On the theory of democratic transitions and consolidations. Mainly in Democracy and Capitalist Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2011).^[16] After a country makes its industrial and capitalist revolution, the transition to democracy will consolidated, because the capitalist class is the only dominant social not to depend to direct control of the state to appropriate the economic surplus.

On the theory of the public management reform. Mainly in Democracy and Public Management Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).^[17] This theory was developed while Bresser-Pereira while he was minister of Public Administration and Reform of the State (see above).

On the methodological critique of neoclassical economics. Bresser-Pereira wrote two papers (“The two methods and the hard core of economics” (2009)^[18] and “Historical models and economic syllogisms’ (2018)^[19]). The two methods are the historical-deductive and the hypothetical deductive, which neoclassic economics uses ignoring that it must be subsidiary to the first one.

On new developmentalism. Mainly in New Developmentalism (2024).^[20] A development macroeconomics based on development economics and post-Keynesian economics and  that a group of Brazilian economists is building since the early 2000s. It includes an economics and a political economy.

New Developmentalism focus in the five macroeconomic prices (interest rate, exchange rate, wage rate, profit rate, and inflation rate) and in the current-account deficit. It claims that, in developing countries, the exchange rate tends to be overvalued in the long-term due to recurrent current-account deficits and high interest rates. Orthodox economists and local politicians view such deficits as ‘natural’ and the high interest rates as required to ‘control inflation’.

New developmentalism includes a new model of Dutch disease. The exchange rate that applies to the manufacturing industry, the ‘industrial equilibrium’ exchange rate, may be different from the ‘current equilibrium’ (the one that balances the current account) when the country in an exporter of commodities. In this case, depending on the cycle of the commodity prices and on Ricardian rents, the  exchange rate that makes internationally competitive each manufacturing industry that uses the best technology available may be  substantially more depreciated than the one that makes profitable the exports of commodity. The difference between the current and the industrial equilibrium is the Dutch disease. Countries have often neutralized the Dutch disease and were able to industrialise with the use of import tariffs (and export subsidies for the manufactured goods), despite the fact they didn’t know what it. The ways of neutralizing the Dutch disease are explained in New Developmentalism (2024).^[20]

New developmentalism is critical of growth with foreign savings – a policy that developing countries adopt ignoring that it has a self-defeating element: the resulting net capital inflows appreciate the national currency and discourage investment in the manufacturing industry.

• Development and Crisis in Brazil. Westview Press. 1984. ISBN 0-86531-559-0.
• A Sociedade Estatal e a Tecnoburocracia [State Society and Technobureaucracy] (in Portuguese). Editora Brasiliense. 1981.
• Lucro, Acumulação e Crise [Profit, Accumulation and Crisis] (in Portuguese). Editora Brasiliense. 1986. ISBN 8511090339.
• The Theory of Inertial Inflation, with Yoshiaki Nakano. Lynne Rienner Publishers. 1987. ISBN 1-55587-007-4.
• Economic Reforms in New Democracies, with José María Maravall and Adam Przeworski. Cambridge University Press. 1993. ISBN 1-55587-532-7.
• Democracy and Public Management Reform. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-926118-0.
• Developing Brazil: Overcoming the Failure of the Washington Consensus. Lynne Rienner Publishers. 2009. ISBN 978-1-58826-624-8.
• Globalization and Competition. Cambridge University Press. 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-19635-2.
• Developmental Macroeconomics: New Developmentalism as a Growth Strategy, with Nelson Marconi and José Luis Oreiro. London: Routledge, 2014. ISBN 978-0-415-81778-3 (hardback) and ISBN 978-0-203-58350-0 (e-book).
• The Political Construction of Brazil: Society, Economy, and State Since Independence. Lynne Rienner Publishers. 2017. ISBN 978-1-62637-307-5.
• New Developmentalism: Introducing a new economics and political economy. 2024, Edwar Elgar Publishing. ISBN 978 1 80392 778 7
• Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Rentier Capitalism. 2024. Oxford University Press.

• "Accelerating, maintaining, and sanctioning factor of inflation", with Yoshiaki Nakano, Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 4 (1) January 1984: 5-21. 1984^[21]
• "Six interpretations on the Brazilian social formation". Latin American Perspectives. 11 (1): 35–72. Winter 1984.
• “Foreign savings, insufficiency of demand, and low growth” with Paulo Gala, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 30 (3): 315-334. 2002.^[22]
• "Citizenship and res publica: the emergence of republican rights". Citizenship Studies. 6 (2): 145–164. 2002.
• “Economic growth with foreign savings?" (2002), com Yoshiaki Nakano. Revista de Economia Política 23 (2), Abril 2003: 3-27 (apenas na versão digital).^[23]
• "The two methods and the hard core of economics". Journal of Post Keynesian Economics. 31 (3): 493–522. Spring 2009.
• "The global financial crisis, neoclassical economics, and the neoliberal years of capitalism". Revue de la Régulation. 7: 1–29. Spring 2010.
• "From the national-bourgeoisie to the dependency interpretation of Latin America". Latin American Perspectives. 178, 38 (3): 40–58. May 2011.
• "Democracy and capitalist revolution". Économie Appliquée. 65 (4): 111–139. 2012.
• “The access to demand”, Keynesian Brazilian Review 1 (1) 1^o. semester: 35-43. 2015.^[24]
• “Growth and distribution: a revised classical model" (2018). Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 38(1) January 2018: 3-27.^[25]
• “Historical models and economic syllogisms”, Journal of Economic Methodology, 25: 68-82. 2018.^[19]
• “An alternative to the middle-income trap”, with Eliane Cristina Araújo and Samuel Costa Peres, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 52, March: 294-312. 2019.^[26]
• “Why did trade liberalization work for East Asia but fail in Latin America?”, Challenge 62 (4): 273-277. 2019.^[27]
• “Models of the developmental state”, CEPAL Review, 128, August: 35-47. 2019.^[28]
• “Financialisation, coalition of interests and interest rate in Brazil”, with Luiz Fernando de Paula and Miguel Bruno, Revue de la Régulation, 27: 21-31. Spring 2020.^[29]
• “New Developmentalism: development macroeconomics for middle-income countries”, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 44: 629–646. 2020.^[30]
• “A brief history of development theory, with José Luis Oreiro, Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, 44 (1) January: 5-28. 2024.^[31]

• 1997 – Honorary Knight Commander of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire^[32]
• 2005 – Professor Emeritus, Getulio Vargas Foundation
• 2010 – Doctor Honoris Causae, University of Buenos Aires^[33]
• 2012 – James Street Scholar, Association for Evolutionary Economics^[34]
• 2015 – Juca Pato Award [pt], as the 2014 intellectual of the year, Brazilian Association of Writers [pt]^{[35][failed verification]}
• 2017 – Title of Emeritus Researcher (Applied Social Sciences), CNPq^[36]

• Em Busca do Novo [In Search of the New], edited by Yoshiak Nakano, Furquim and José Marcio Rego. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da Fundação Getulio Vargas. 2005. ISBN 85-225-0497-0.^[1]
• A Teoria Econômica na Obra de Bresser-Pereira [Economic Theory on the Work of Bresser-Pereira], edited by José Luis Oreiro, Luiz Fernando de Paula and Nelson Marconi. Santa Maria, RS: Editora da UFSM. 2015. ISBN 9788573912296

• Official website – Includes additional papers on Bresser-Pereira's academic work
• Economic Reforms in New Democracies A Social-Democratic Approach
• Democracy and Public Management Reform
• Developing Brazil: Overcoming the Failure of the Washington Consensus
• Globalization and Competition
• Democracy and Public Management Reform
• Developmental Macroeconomics
• The Political Construction of Brazil: Society, Economy, and State Since Independence
• Latin American Perspectives
• Citizenship and Res Publica: The Emergence of Republican Rights
• The two methods and the hard core of economics
• Journal Articles
• Bresser-Pereira Curiculum Lattes CNPq
• Interview of Bresser-Pereira
• Visiting Professor at the University of São Paulo