Hirschman and the Visiting-Economist Syndrome

For over a century, Latin America and other underdeveloped areas of the world received periodical visits from specialist missions who were put in charge of diagnosing the region´s economic problems and prescribing policies to cope with them. Most of those economic consultants came to Latin America as intermediaries between borrowers and lenders, during a period where the continent was benefited by different cycles of foreign loans. Paul W. Drake (1994) points the importance of those “money doctors ” in the economic changes that occurred in Latin America during the twentieth century. Their visits began in 1890 and from that year to 1920 every Latin American country except Argentina and Brazil received technical visits from foreign experts. After 1920 the number of foreign experts increased, as the time intervals between their visits shortened and they reached a greater number of countries, including the above mentioned exceptions. Drake points out that one of the major roles of these consultants was to supply information on and to both borrowers and lenders. They were also in charge of th