This paper examines the development of a U.S. style of economics at the government and university levels in 1950s Chile, one of the principal dimensions of U.S. non-military assistance during the early Cold War. It focuses on the impact of the Eisenhower administration on the Chilean government during the Ibáñez administration (1952-1958) through the Point Four program and the efforts of U.S. universities, scholars, and global philanthropic foundations in Chilean universities to develop and strengthen economics departments. This paper addresses the role of the United States at the beginning of the liberalization of Chile’s economic paradigm during the second half of the twentieth century, contextualizing the relationship between the Ibáñez and Eisenhower administrations that allowed for the growing involvement of U.S. groups and ideals in Chile. Specifically, it analyzes the origins of the partnership between the International Cooperation Administration and the University of Chicago that developed training and research in economics at the Catholic University with the assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation. This partnership created an academic institute of economics research in Santiago and allowed the exchange of students between Chile and Chicago. This work argues that processes initiated in the 1950s are crucial to understanding later economic policymaking and ideological development in Chile. The efforts of the Eisenhower administration led to a combination of successes and failures in Chile. These influences left traces of an early liberal paradigm that would become predominant among a segment of the Chilean technocratic class, making it more cosmopolitan.

This paper examines the intersections between Chilean scholars and U.S. government-sponsored educational exchanges, universities, and global foundations by looking at the transnational trajectory of economist Carlos Massad between the 1950s and early 1970s. The Cold War fostered the globalization of graduate education after World War II, propelling the U.S.-oriented professionalization of postwar social sciences in Latin America. During this period, which coincided with an increased scholarly interest in the region, many Chileans went to the United States to pursue graduate studies in economics at U.S. universities. Massad's trajectory is an excellent example of how the Cold War led to increased U.S. government spending and significant financial support from foundations for developing networks dedicated to studying Latin America through the lens of social sciences and influencing policymaking. Holding key academic roles at the University of Chile in the 1960s, Massad wielded influence as one of the principal economists of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva's administration from 1964 to 1970. This paper explores Massad's academic itinerary between the University of Chicago, where he pursued graduate studies between 1956 and 1965, and the University of Chile and his first professional steps at the Central Bank of Chile (1964-1970) and the International Monetary Fund (1970-1974). It argues that Massad's trajectory from international student to academic luminary represents the beginnings of the U.S.-oriented internationalization of economics in Chile and illustrates the ascent of U.S.-trained economists to positions of significant influence in government and academia during the second half of the twentieth century.

This paper examines the transnational contacts between the University of Chile and U.S. government-sponsored academic institutions, global foundations, and scholars between the 1950s and 1970s. At the University of Chile, Chilean and U.S. economists, spanning a broad spectrum of schools of thought, worked together, competed for hegemony, and mutually influenced one another. Specifically, this paper discusses how U.S. scholars, the Land Tenure Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Rockefeller Foundation decisively contributed to the theory of modernization-oriented professionalization of economics in Chile. By examining these connections to advance the social sciences in Chile, this paper questions categories used to interpret relationships between universities, foundations, and the U.S. government, arguing that the U.S.-oriented professionalization of economics in Chile was a complex, two-way process encompassing a multitude of transnational actors. It shows that the University of Chile was an ecumenical “contact zone” of economists during most of the 1960s. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, efforts to create a diverse intellectual environment at the University of Chile were unsuccessful. The Cold War and the domestic struggles over revolution, counterrevolution, and reform shaped Chilean universities in these years, placing them at the center of the power and knowledge competition between Marxist, Christian Democratic, and right-wing agendas about the general organization of society. The economic profession became another arena of dispute for ideological influence until the rise of the military regime plunged this ecosystem into a crisis of academic freedom and intellectual uniformity.