ABSTRACT
This chapter studies the constitution of a system of production of academic knowledge in economics in Colombia from 1934 to 1990. I show that the early forms of academic analysis of economic problems in Colombia show an important influence of heterodox currents and a close relationship with developments in other social sciences. I study how Marxism and Cepalino structuralism were influential during the years before the establishment of academic institutions formally dedicated to economic analysis. Until the 1950s, most of the advice to governments on orienting their expenditures, their external and internal financing, and the social accounting required to frame such policies depended on foreign experts. This situation began to change during the 1960s and was reversed in the 1980s. Thus, this chapter shows that academic production in economics in Colombia had an exploratory beginning contrary to developments elsewhere in the world and a late but accelerated convergence towards the dominant paradigms from the 1970s. However, this convergence did not occur through a theoretical intellectual production but rather through the adoption of empirical methods and analytical approaches typical of the discipline's mainstream.
