Chicago recruited Chile’s Catholic University as a laboratory to test its economics
Evidence
Efforts to nurture neoliberal ideas in Chile culminated in 1956 with the agreement that the economics faculty of the Catholic University of Santiago (Universidad Católica, CU) signed with its counterpart at the University of Chicago. The so-called Project Chile was conceived as part of the U.S. Point Four Program of technical assistance and economic aid to underdeveloped countries. It was conducted by the International Cooperation Administration, or ICA (today the Agency for International Development, or AID) (Fontaine 1988, 23). The origins of the agreement can be traced to the conversations of the chair of the Economics Department at Chicago, Theodore Schultz, with Albion Patterson, director of the ICA and technical cooperation at the Institute of Inter-American Affairs in Chile. Schultz was particularly concerned with education and human capital as they related to economic growth. He accordingly proposed a project entitled “Technical Assistance to Latin America,” and “wanted to use Chile as a laboratory to test his theories.” — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1548
Categorization
- XREF: This is the direct genesis of the Chicago Boys’ Chile experiment that culminates in Pinochet-era neoliberal restructuring. — connects to: Chicago-trained economists filled key Chilean ministries under Pinochet — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1624; Chicago’s 1956 Chile program trained thirty economists and reshaped nationwide economics teaching — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1550; The CIA-backed coup installed Chicago-school austerity economists in Chile — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 356 (+1 more)
- SEED: Angle: ‘We used Chile as a laboratory’ — a country-as-experiment epistemic stance later vindicated and catastrophized in the 1973 coup.
Broader Connections
- Chicago-trained economists filled key Chilean ministries under Pinochet
#expands(0.92) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1624 - Chicago’s 1956 Chile program trained thirty economists and reshaped nationwide economics teaching
#expands(0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1550 - The CIA-backed coup installed Chicago-school austerity economists in Chile
#corroborates(0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 356 - Chilean neoliberalism drew on multiple schools, not Chicago economics alone.
#qualifies(0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1612