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Credit for the first formal statement of the structuralist theory of inflation is due to a Mexican economist, Juan Noyola Vazquez, who in an article published in a Mexican journal in 1956 argued that, especially in underdeveloped countries, inflation is not a monetary phenomenon but the result of interaction between two factors, 'basic inflationary pressures' due to structural rigidities and the 'propagating mechanism’ of competing income claims accommodated by monetary expansion.
After this initial Mexican contribution, the structuralist theory of inflation was developed in Santiago, at ECLA (the UN Economic Commission of Latin America of which Prebisch was Executive Secretary) and at the Institute of Economics of the University of Chile. The chapter on Chile in the ECLA Economic Survey of Latin America for 1957 contained a brief statement of the view that Chile’s inflation was a structural phenomenon, but what has been called the locus classicus of the structuralist theory of inflation is an article, first published in Spanish in December 1958 by Osvaldo Sunkel. He stated the central position of structuralism concisely:
“Basic Inflationary Pressures. These are fundamentally governed by the structural limitations, rigidity or inflexibility of the economic system. In fact, the inelasticity of some productive sectors to adjust to changes in demand – or, in short, the lack of mobility of productive resources and the defective functioning of the price system – are chiefly responsible for structural inflationary disequilibria.”
The intriguing fact is that both Sunkel and Noyola (to whom Sunkel expressed his indebteness) cited, as the authority for their statements about structural factors, an article by Kalecki published in Mexico in 1955. Noyola referred to ‘the analysis by Kalecki which stresses the importance of the rigidity of supply and the degree of monopoly in the economic system’. Sunkel cited both Kalecki’s article and the UN World Economic Survey 1956 written after Kalecki had ceased to be in charge of the Survey but no doubt still under his influence.
The chief point of Kalecki’s article, based on lectures he gave in Mexico in 1953, was to stress that in LDC’s ‘the supply of food may be fairly rigid’, and that the inelastic supply of food will, if aggregate demand increases and raises food prices, ‘cause a fall in real wages and will generate an inflationary price-wage spiral’. The UN World Economic Survey spelled out the structuralist doctrine more fully:
“An additional key element in inflationary pressure in underdeveloped countries is the high degree of immobility of resources..., which prevents the structure of production from adapting itself sufficiently to the pattern of demand.... Thus, in underdeveloped countries with limited supplies of food and other essential consumer goods, severe inflationary pressures may be generated even in the absence of budget deficits and with relatively low rates of investment.”
In its analysis of the contributions of the early authors to the struturalist theory of inflation, text allows the following conclusions:
Item 3 - An increase in the money supply, although not the basic cause of inflation, is one of the propagating mechanisms of inflation.
Outras questões do mesmo concurso: ANPEC / ExSN (ANPEC) / 2003
