Living with Inflation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5128552 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Melissa Teixeira (0000-0002-4320-5714), M E S TEIXEIRA (0000-0001-9843-2490) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 2025 |
| Issue | 151 |
| Pages | 153-187 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Radical History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-6545 • E-ISSN: 1534-1453 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/01636545-11506847 |
| OpenAlex | W4410530318 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 34 |
This article puts inflation at the center of the making and unravelling of Brazil's economic miracle, a period of high growth, low inflation, fast-paced industrialization, and rising consumerism between 1968 and 1973. This so-called miracle coincided with the most repressive phase of the twenty-one-year military dictatorship (1964-1985). The military regime took the credit for Brazil's economic triumphs, weaving a narrative that democracy was bad for economic stability by blaming prior inflationary crises on profligate democratic governments and workers' demands for higher wages. But after 1973, chronic inflation became an everyday mathematical and material hardship for Brazilian citizens-and headache for the policymakers and economists trying to forecast and freeze prices. Focusing on inflation trends and the cost-of-living crisis in Brazil from the 1960s to the 1990s, this article shows how the military's miracle was never as solid as its supporters claimed. It argues that inflation is more than a metric for evaluating the country's performance. Inflation became the target of seductive myths and heterodox policy experiments, as the miracle-makers tried to rewrite economic rules. Inflation also became a source of social conflict and political pressure, framing debates about social and economic justice as the country transitioned to democracy in the 1980s
Economics · Inflation (cosmology · Keynesian economics · Physics · Political science · Theoretical physics · Economic Theory and Policy · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism
Brazil's Revolution in Commerce
The Age of Extremes
The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies
Fighting Past Economic Wars
The Brazilian Borrowing Experience
Commodities must be controlled’
A Consumer's Republic
The shock of the global
Empire of things
The History of Consumer Credit in Brazil
How About Some Meat
The politics of military rule in Brazil 1964–85
In search of stability
The world that Latin America created
Inflation and Indexation
The Desperation of the Military's Economists
Intimate Ironies
Brazilian Inflation from 1980 to 1993
Fifty Years in Five' and What's in It for Us? Development Promotion, Populism, Industrial Workers andCarestiain 1950s Brazil
Living Worse and Costing More
Who but a Woman? The Transnational Diffusion of Anti-Communism among Conservative Women in Brazil, Chile and the United States during the Cold War
The Decline and Fall of Brazil's Cruzado
Economistas e culturas econômicas no Brasil e na Argentina
Inflation
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |