Furtado, North and the New Economic History

Some parallels are drawn between Celso Furtado’s structural and Douglass North’s neo-institutional approaches to economic history. It is argued that both authors interpreted the economic history of Brazil and the United States respectively in the context of the investigation of the economic growth process, under the influence of the staples approach to trade and growth. Against some commentators, it is shown that Furtado did pay attention to quantitative evidence. The role of colonial rules is also highlighted in the search for an explanation of the divergent long-run performances of the Brazilian and North-American economies.