In response to an increasing demand for a more open, pluralist approach both in teaching and academic research in Economics a group of heterodox scholars have gathered together to launch a new Master’s Program in Economic Development in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Program seeks to provide economics students with an alternative curriculum while covering—and seeking for students to master—standard mainstream literature and themes, including advanced quantitative skills, as middle step in the development of an academic career or public service.
Latin American students for the most part lack this type of approach and opportunity. Policy discussion has to some extent shifted in recent times in Latin America due to the progressive turn part of the region has taken at the political level. But despite this shift in debate, policy making remains to a large extent permeated by the orthodox vision and so too, with a few notable exceptions, curriculum design and teaching in the field Economics.
While providing wide-ranging courses on development, macroeconomics, microeconomics, econometrics and history of economic ideas, the program will offer students the possibility of picking between two alternative concentrations —the first, on “Macroeconomics and finance for development”, to be coordinated by Matías Vernengo (Ph.D., New School University); the second, on “Industrial organization and technical change”, to be coordinated by Pablo Lavarello (Ph.D., University of Paris XIII). Martín Abeles (Ph.D., New School University) will be the Program Director, backed by a host of prominent academics.
The Program will be hosted by the
National University of San Martín (UNSAM), a prestigious Argentine public university, with great achievements not only in social sciences, but also—and very outstandingly indeed—in natural sciences, and classes taught in downtown Buenos Aires. The Program will begin in 2013 and the deadline for applications is December 27, 2012. For more information go
here (in Spanish).
