Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, Award Juca Pato 2015
Born São Paulo, Brazil
Nationality Brazilian
Website http://www.bresserpereira.org.br
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, Ignácio Rangel
Contributions Inertial inflation, new developmentalism, technobureaucracy
Awards Emeritus Professor, from Getulio Vargas Foundation (2005), Doctor Honoris Causa, from University of Buenos Aires (2010), James Street Scholar, from Association for Evolutionary Economics (2012)

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira (June 30, 1934) is a Brazilian economist and social scientist. He teaches at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, in São Paulo, since 1962, and edits the Brazilian Journal of Political Economy since 1981. He was finance minister (1987), and in this condition he proposed what would be eventually the Plan Brady (Brady Bond) which solved the 1980s’ major foreign debt crisis.[1] He was minister of public administration (1995–1998) and of science and technology (1999). His work as economist is today focused, on the theoretical side, on new developmentalism, development macroeconomics, the methodological critique of neoclassical economics, on the theory of the democratic, social, and developmental state, and on the critique of neoliberalism; and, on the applied side, on the Brazilian economy and society.

Career

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira was born in São Paulo, in 1934. His bachelor's degree was in Law by the University of São Paulo (1957); his MBA, by Michigan State University (1960); his PhD (1974) and his Livre Docência in Economics (1984), by University of São Paulo. He teaches at the Getulio Vargas Foundation since 1962. He was visiting professor at the (Pantheon-Sorbonne University)(1977), at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (2003-2010), and at the University of São Paulo (1989 and 2002–03). He was also visiting fellow at Oxford University in Nuffield College and St Antony's College in 1999 and 2001.

From 1963 to 1982, while keeping his academic activities, he was vice-president of Pão de Açucar Supermarkets(GPA (company)); he participated from the opening of its second story, in 1963; in 1982 the firm had become the largest retail chain in Brazil. In 1983, when Brazil was beginning to democratize, he entered public life, first as president of the Bank of the State of São Paulo (1983–84). In 1985 and 1986, he was chief of staff of the governor of São Paulo, André Franco Montoro. In 1987, he became Finance Minister of Brazil in the José Sarney administration. After leaving the ministry, he participated from the foundation of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party - PSDB. Between 1995 and 1998, he was Minister of Federal Administration and Reform of the State and, in 1999 Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, both under the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration. Since 1999 he is full-time academic professor. In 2010 he left the PSDB with the argument that the political party had turned conservative.

As Finance Minister (1987)

In 1987 he assumed the Ministry of Finance (Brazil) a moment of deep crisis that followed the failure of the economic bubble that eventually was the Cruzado Plan: high inflation resumed at 15% a month, business firms and the federate states were bankrupt.[2] Negotiations with IMF and fiscal adjustment were seen by politicians in power as unacceptable. Nevertheless, Bresser prepared a "Macroeconomic Adjustment Plan", which proposed a fiscal adjustment that was understood as a condition for the control of inflation. Second, he prepared and adopted what came to be called the "Bresser Plan"[3] - a price freeze that included fiscal adjustment and the neutralization of the inertial inflation, which eventually didn’t work.[4] Third, he developed a plan based on the securitization of the foreign debt and the relative de-linkage of commercial banks and IMF in the negotiation process, which would be rejected by the secretary of the Treasury, James Baker, but 18 months later, would be the Brady Plan that led to a close the foreign debt crisis.[5]

As Minister of Federal Administration and Reform of the State (MARE) (1995-98)

With the election of Fernando Henrique Cardoso to the presidency of Brazil, Bresser-Pereira assumed the Ministry of Federal Administration and Reform of the State (Mare).[lower-alpha 1] He understood that Brazil's civil service reform had already been made since the 1930s and initiated the managerial reform of the state. He elaborated a white paper, the "Plano Diretor da Reforma do Aparelho do Estado", and developed a theoretical framework for this reform, which, on the managerial perspective, was based on management by results, on competition for excellence between the state organizations, and on a formal system of social accountability and, on the structural perspective, on the creation of the "social organizations" – non-profit private organizations to which the state should transfer its large social and scientific services that don’t involve the use of state power. He also proposed an amendment to the chapter on the public administration of the 1988 Constitution. This managerial reform of the state is happening in Brazil, mainly at state and municipal levels, but also at the federal level, while a large number of social organizations continue to be created. The Brazilian 1999 managerial reform turned into an international reference.[6] The books and papers that Bresser-Pereira wrote on the subject [7] turned the main element in the courses on public administration offered by the Brazilian universities. Several Master and PhD dissertations have been written on the reform.[8][9] While in MARE, Bresser-Pereira was also president of Centro Latinoamericano de Administración para el Desarrolho - CLAD between 1995 and 1997. In his term, he gave to the managerial reform a Latin American dimension,[10] and with the same objective, he organized the first yearly congress of CLAD, which is today CLAD's key activity. [lower-alpha 2]

As Minister of Science and Technology (1999)

In the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Brazil) Bresser-Pereira defined the policy of transforming the research funds originated from the state-owned enterprises recently privatized into Sectorial Funds attached to the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FNDCT). In order to achieve a better integration between the Ministry and its main agency, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq, that he also presided it. Bresser-Pereira unified the academic curricula that the Federal Government provides for the evaluation of researchers under the name of Lattes Platform.[lower-alpha 3]

Academic Work

He teaches economics at Getulio Vargas Foundation since 1962; in 2005 he became Emeritus Professor of Getulio Vargas Foundation.[11] In 1996 created in the Foundation, in São Paulo, the first master program on business administration in Brazil. He founded and is the editor of the Revista de Economia Política / Brazilian Journal of Political Economy since 1981.[12][13] He is frequent contributor to newspapers, particularly to Folha de S.Paulo. His mains contributions on economic theory are the historical model of growth and distribution with three types of technical progress, the theory of the inertial inflation, the 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 is involved in defining new developmentalism – an ambitious project involving a macroeconomics, a political economy, and the draft of a microeconomics.[14]

Selected books

Bresser-Pereira has a large number of papers public in journals and edited books.

Selected papers (not republished in the books)

Books on his academic work

Additional papers on Bresser-Pereira’s academic work are in his website: http://www.bresserpereira.org.br.

Honors and distinctions

Sites

References

  1. ↑ James Boughton (2001) The Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund 1979-1989. Washington: IMF: pp.479 and 526-29. Available at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/history/2001/.
  2. ↑ Bresser-Pereira, Luiz Carlos (1992) "Contra a Corrente: a experiência no ministério da fazenda", Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, n°.19, julho 1992: 05-30. In French: "Experiences d'un Gouvernment", Problèmes d'Amérique Latine, n.93, third quarter 1989.
  3. ↑ Timeline of Brazilian economic stabilization plans.
  4. ↑ "Brazil's inflation and the Cruzado Plan, 1985-1988", in Pamela S. Falk Inflation: Are we next? Hyperinflation and solutions in Argentina, Brazil and Israel, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1990. (The original tittle was "Brazil’s two price freezes: the Cruzado and the Bresser Plan".
  5. ↑ L.C.Bresser-Pereira (1999) "The Turning Point in the Debt Crisis", Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 19 (2) pp 103-130
  6. ↑ See Majeed, Rushda (2011) "Strengthening public administration", report on the researchseries, Innovations for Successful Societies, Princeton: The Bobst Center for Peace and Justice of Princeton University - http://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/publications/strengthening-public-administration-brazil-1995-1998/
  7. ↑ Bresser-Pereira, Luiz Carlos (2004) Democracy and Public Management Reform Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bresser-Pereira, Luiz Carlos (1998) Reforma do Estado para a Cidadania. São Paulo: Editora 34. Bresser-Pereira, Luiz Carlos e Peter Spink, eds. (1999) Reforming the State: Managerial Public Administration in Latin America. Boulder, Co.: Lynne Renner Publishers.
  8. ↑ Gaetani, Francisco (2005) Public Management Constitutional Reforms in Modern Brazil 1930-1998. PhD dissertation, London University - http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/2026/1/U505422.pdf/.
  9. ↑ Leite, Leonardo Queiroz (2014) Um empreendedor de políticas públicas em ação: Bresser-Pereira e a reforma da administração pública de 1995 no Brasil [An entrepreneur of public policies in action: Bresser-Pereira and the 1995 Reform of Public Administration]. PhD dissertation, Political Science Program of the Federal University of São Carlos/.
  10. ↑ http://www.campinas.sp.gov.br/arquivos/recursos-humanos/txt_apoio_documento_clad.pdf/
  11. ↑ http://eesp.fgv.br/professores/luiz-carlos-bresser-pereira/
  12. ↑ http://www.rep.org.br
  13. ↑ http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_serial&pid=0101-3157&lng=en&nrm=iso/
  14. ↑ Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira (2015) "Reflecting on new developmentalism and classical developmentalism", Working Paper EESP/FGV 395, June 2015. Available at http://www.bresserpereira.org.br.
  15. ↑ http://www.bresserpereira.org.br/books/embuscadonovo/16-O-Que-%C3%A9-a-Tecnoburocracia.pdf.
  16. ↑ https://scholar.google.fr/citations?hl=fr&user=8vPanUMAAAAJ.
  17. ↑ http://www.uba.ar/consejo_superior/comisiones_anteriores.php?c=1&id=61.
  18. ↑ http://afee.net/?page=veblencommons_award_street_ayres_scholars_2014&side=past_jh_street_scholars/
  19. ↑ http://www.ube.org.br

Notes

  1. ↑ The MARE existe between 1995-1998. After that period, its functions were transfer to the Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management
  2. ↑ When Bresser-Pereira left CLAD's presidency, its Directive Committee created CLAD's Scientific Council, and invited Bresser-Pereira to preside it.
  3. ↑ In 1999, when Bresser-Pereira assumed the Ministry of Science and Technology there were three curriculums in use: one in CNPq, other in CAPEs, and a third in a program financed by the World Bank. He chose the one more developed at that moment - the CNPq's, changed its name to Lattes, in hommagen to Cezar Lattes, and obtained the aggrement of CAPES. Later on, the research institutions at state level also adopted Lattes as their official academic curriculum.

External links

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