Underdevelopment in contemporary world: is structuralism still relevant?

Vol. 37 No. 4 (2017)

Oct-Dec / 2017
Published February 26, 2020
PDF-English
PDF-English

How to Cite

Pedro Vilaça Junior, Ademir. 2017. “Underdevelopment in Contemporary World: Is Structuralism Still Relevant?”. Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 37 (4):755-71. https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572017v37n04a06.

Underdevelopment in contemporary world: is structuralism still relevant?

Ademir Pedro Vilaça Junior
Economist at SUDENE – Superintendência do Desenvolvimento do Nordeste.
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 37 No. 4 (2017), Oct-Dec / 2017, Pages 755-771

Abstract

This paper intends to evaluate if the Latin American structuralist approach is still relevant to understand capital accumulation dynamics of peripheral countries and their insertion in the global value chains. It’s a theoretical paper that strives to improve the building blocks of structuralism with the incorporation of elements from different approaches to establish a nexus to understand capital accumulation dynamics in the periphery. Considering the relevance of technological accumulation, its impacts over the productive structure and over the international insertion, we strive to analyze factors that perpetuate income diversion in relation to the center. Under this perspective, we conclude that the particularities of peripheral economies changed their form of manifestation without effectively overcome the dependence relation.

JEL Classification: B41; B59; O1.


Keywords: Structuralism economic development central-periphery system.