Abstract

This article is a tentative approach to reconstitute the circumstances which characterized
the creation of the so-called “CEPAL economic thinking”. The author initially tries
to associate this thinking with the “keywords” (or “power ideas”) of “economic development”,
“industríalization” and “economic planning”, which has been raised and established
in Latin America at the end of World War II. Furthermore, analyses the general lines of the
CEP AL thinking, trying to identify its innovator character and the necessary steps to obtain
an active position by the State, assumed as the inductor entity of such development. A brief
evaluation of the resulting impacts of such ideas in Latin America and Brazil, including the
institutional point of view, is also considered.

JEL Classification: B22.