Kaldor visitis eclac: an initial turning point in his ideas? by Helder Lara Ferreira-Filho and José Luis Oreiro.
Throughout his academic career, Nicholas Kaldor changed many of his own views on several aspects. Partially, this was because of his own nature. He was always concerned to check if the theories have some connection with reality, with the so-called “stylized facts”. In the earlier stages of his career, Kaldor was basically an orthodox economist. This changes with the influence of Keynes’ General Theory, so Kaldor begins to work with the idea of an unstable full employment situation. Then, during the Golden Age of Capitalism, Kaldor saw full employment as a “stylized fact”. Finally, in the latter stage of his economic thought trajectory, Kaldor criticizes equilibrium economics and changes much of his own previous views. It is important to understand what events could have driven these changes. The aim of this article is precisely to analyze these changes in Kaldor’s ideas throughout his career and discuss the possibility that the contact with ECLAC and its economists had an important role in the evolution of his thoughts during 1960 and 1970´s. More specifically we will argue that Kaldor´s visit to ECLAC in 1956, Furtado´s visit to Cambridge in 1957-58, and Kaldor´s lectures and studies for many Latin American countries may had a decisive role on the evolution of his economic ideas, mainly regarding the drivers of economic development.
