Tag Archives: Roberto Campos

Roberto Campos and the Brazilian Constitution of 1988

Let me talk again about Roberto Campos and the Brazilian institutions. After a heterodox economic plan was implemented in February of 1986, the entire country was happy and enthusiastic. Later in the year, Brazilians voted for state governor and for a new Congress. Most important, the elected members of this new Congress were also in charge of writing a new Constitution for Brazil. Campos was elected deputado federal (a representative in the Brazilian lower chamber).

As I mentioned in a previous post, he was involved with many of the institutional changes that took place in Brazil between 1964 and 1967, including the creation of the Brazilian Central Bank. Unfortunately, his role in the drafting of the new constitution would be a much smaller one. Although many observers claim that the 1988 Constitution represented a move forward in civil and political rights, the majority of the economists believes that it severely reduced the economic freedom in Brazil by given the Brazilian federal government a central role in the country’s economy.

With a tad of melancholy, Roberto Campos  produced several essays about the changes introduced by the 1988 Constitution that were made available in a book titled “A Constituição Contra o Brasil” (The Constitution against Brazil). This book is a must read for those trying to understand the (good or bad) changes  introduced in the Brazilian economy after 1988. A pdf of the book (in Portuguese) is available here.

Ernesto Lozardo’s new book: Ok, Roberto. Você venceu!

Professor Ernesto Lozardo has taught economics at EAESP-FGV since 1977. I took his Money, Credit, and Banking course when I was a junior at EAESP. To make a long story short, his knowledge and passion about economics and his will to put in practice good economic policies strongly motivated me to pursue a graduate education in economics.

That said, Prof. Lozardo’s new book titled “Ok, Roberto. Você venceu!” (published by Topbooks) is about Roberto Campos. He was one of the most notable Brazilian economists of the last century, not only in terms of designing development policies but also in terms of implementing them. In fact, his policies transformed Brazil from a very poor country in the late 1940s to a middle-income country in the mid 1970s.

I strongly recommend chapters 5, 6, and 7 for those interested in learning more about the institutional reforms conducted by Campos that led to strong economic growth in Brazil in the 1970s. Several of those institutions are still present in Brazil nowadays.