The Chicago Boys were a group of Chilean economists prominent around the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of whom were educated at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, or at its affiliate in the economics department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. After they finished their studies and returned to Latin America, they adopted positions in numerous South American governments including the military dictatorship of Chile (1973–1990), as economic advisors. Many of them reached the highest positions within those governments. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were influenced by Chile's policies and economic reforms.
The "Miracle of Chile" was a term used by economist Milton Friedman to describe the reorientation of the Chilean economy in the 1980s and the effects of the economic policies applied by a large group of Chilean economists who collectively came to be known as the Chicago Boys, having studied at the University of Chicago where Friedman taught. He said the "Chilean economy did very well, but more importantly, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society." The junta to which Friedman refers was a military government that came to power in a 1973 coup d'état, which came to an end in 1990 after a democratic 1988 plebiscite removed Augusto Pinochet from the presidency.
The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs is an interdisciplinary research center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Its mission is to promote a just and peaceful world through research, teaching, and public engagement. The institute's research focuses on three main areas: development, security, and governance. Its faculty include anthropologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians, as well as journalists and other practitioners.
Paul Michael Romer is an American economist and policy entrepreneur who is a University Professor in Economics at Boston College. Romer is best known as the former Chief Economist of the World Bank and for co-receiving the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in endogenous growth theory. He also coined the term "mathiness," which he describes as misuse of mathematics in economic research.
Arnold Carl Harberger is an American economist. His approach to the teaching and practice of economics is to emphasize the use of analytical tools that are directly applicable to real-world issues. His influence on academic economics is reflected in part by the widespread use of the term "Harberger triangle" to refer to the standard graphical depiction of the efficiency cost of distortions of competitive equilibrium. His influence on the practice of economic policy is manifested by the high positions attained by his followers in national agencies such as central banks and ministries of finance, and in international agencies such as the World Bank.
Timothy Jerome Kehoe is an American economist and professor at the University of Minnesota. His area of specialty is macroeconomics and international economics.
The economy of Chile has shifted substantially over time from the heterogeneous economies of the diverse indigenous peoples to an early husbandry-oriented economy and finally to one of raw material export and a large service sector. Chile's recent economic history has been the focus of an extensive debate, as it pioneered neoliberal economic policies.
Andrés Velasco Brañes is a Chilean economist and professor who served as Minister of Finance in the first government of President Michelle Bachelet from March 2006 to March 2010. He is currently the Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics.
José De Gregorio Rebeco is a Chilean economist, academic, researcher, consultant and politician. He has been the Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, Minister of the Economy, Mining and Energy during the administration of Ricardo Lagos and is currently the Dean of the School of Economics and Business of the Universidad de Chile. He is also a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Sebastián Edwards a member of the Edwards family is a Chilean economist, professor, speaker, and consultant. He is currently the Henry Ford II Professor of International Business Economics at the UCLA Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1993 until April 1996, he was the Chief Economist for the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a member of the advisory board of Transnational Research Corporation and co-chairman of the Inter American Seminar on Economics (IASE). He is the Past President of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA), an international professional association of economists with academic interests in Latin America and the Caribbean region. He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Kiel Institute of World Economics, Kiel-Germany. He is a member of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Council of Economic Advisors.
Stephany Griffith-Jones is an economist specializing in international finance and development. Her expertise lies in the reform of the international financial system, particularly in financial regulation, global governance, and international capital flows. Currently, she serves as a member of the Governor Board at the Central Bank of Chile. She has held various positions throughout her career, including financial markets director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue based at Columbia University, associate fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, and professorial fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University.
The Crisis of 1982 was a major economic crisis suffered in Chile during the military government of Chile (1973–1990). Chile's GDP fell 14.3%, and unemployment rose to 23.7%.
Adriana Debora Kugler is an American economist who serves as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She previously served as U.S. executive director at the World Bank, nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in April 2022. She is a professor of public policy at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy and is currently on leave from her tenured position at Georgetown. She served as the Chief Economist to U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis from September 6, 2011 to January 4, 2013.
José Pablo Arellano Marin is an economist, academic, researcher, company director, consultant and Chilean politician, current member of Amarillos por Chile. He was Minister of Education under the governments of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle and of Michelle Bachelet, chief executive officer of Codelco-Chile, a state-owned company and also the largest company in the country. His father was José Arellano, a Falangist former mayor of Cartagena and former president of the Association of Municipalities of the time. He died when Arellano was just four years old. He has been married since 1975 to the preschool teacher and landscape designer María Elena (Manena) Recabarren, and they have four children, José Pablo, Magdalena, Andrés and Francisca.
Duncan K. Foley is an American economist. He is the Leo Model Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Economics at MIT and Stanford, and Professor of Economics at Columbia University. He has held visiting professorships at Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, UC Berkeley, and Dartmouth College, as well as the New School for Social Research.
James Alan Robinson is a British economist and political scientist. He is currently the Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. He also serves as the Institute Director of The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the Harris School. Robinson has previously taught at Harvard University between 2004 and 2015 and also at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Southern California and the University of Melbourne.
Mario Marcel Cullell is a Chilean economist who has been serving as Chile Minister of Finance since 11 March 2022. He previously served as Governor of the Central Bank of Chile. He was named Governor in December 2016 and member of the Bank's Board from October 2015. He has been a close collaborator to the governments of the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy (1990–2010), and for six years held the position of Budget Director, where he played a key role in the design of the structural surplus rule.
The National Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences was created in Chile in 1992 under Law 19169. It is granted "to the humanist, scientist, or academic, who has distinguished himself for his contribution in the field of Human Sciences". The history field has its own National Award.
Chicago Boys is a 2015 Chilean documentary film written and directed by Carola Fuentes & Rafael Valdeavellano. The film tells the story of the Chicago Boys, a group of Chilean economists trained at the Catholic University of Chile who, after conducting graduate studies at the University of Chicago under professor Arnold Harberger, return to their country and, after Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship (1973–1990), become the main ideologues of the neoliberal economic model in Chile.
