Roberto Pereira Silva, 2024-26 HOPE Center Visiting Scholar

Roberto Pereira Silva, a HOPE Center Visiting Scholar, came to Duke in 2024 to examine the papers of Earl J. Hamilton (1899–1989), an economist who, in the late 1930s, helped found the US-based Economic History Association and whose papers are part of the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke’s Rubenstein Library.

“I’m interested in the relationship between history and economic theory, the way in which economists in the late 1930s, who were mostly theorists, dealt with history and empirical data,” says Roberto.

Hamilton, who was a professor at Duke from 1927 to 1944, had interpreted data using the quantity theory of money, a theory that basically says that prices are determined by the amount of money in circulation.

“But he was also close to certain French economists like Fernand Braudel who were suspicious of using economic theory to understand the past,” says Roberto, who was born in Guarulhos and lived as a boy near an Olivetti typewriter factory.

The conflict between data and theory played out in the discussions that led to the establishment of the Economic History Association.

“Just what should constitute economic history? What exactly should economic historians study, and to what end? What about methods and approaches to doing history? All those questions were in serious dispute.”

Economic history is generally regarded as the history of the economy and economic phenomena. A good example of economic history is the books that Hamilton wrote on the changes in prices in Spain.

Hamilton and the other founders of the EHA butted heads with the well-known economist Simon Kuznets, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971 for his empirical work on economic growth.

“Hamilton and his colleagues wanted the economic history association to first collect data from businesses and governmental records and then produce studies of the effect of the US government on economic development. But Kuznets thought that was incredibly vague. He wanted the association to pursue far more specific subjects and identify precisely the problems it wanted to solve.”

Eventually, with funds from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Economic History Association was established in 1940, and the first issue of its journal appeared in 1941, with articles on ship owning, French railways, and the efforts of Massachusetts textile mills to recruit workers.

Roberto’s interest in the interplay between history and economic theory began with his work as a doctoral student. While pursuing a PhD at the University of São Paulo, Roberto wrote a dissertation on the great Brazilian economist Celso Furtado (1920–2004). 

Unlike previous historians, Roberto looked not just at Furtado’s books—his major works—but also his newspaper columns, book reviews, and the like. 

“Furtado’s work changed not only because of his studies of development and international trade but also because he saw Latin America and Brazil change. That is to say, he looked closely at what was happening in the real world, and used his observations, informed by history, to propose reforms for the future.”

Unlike economists in the United States, Furtado was, at least at one time, a living presence in the imaginations of many Brazilians. 

“My father, who didn’t have a college education, remembered Furtado,” says Roberto. 

As a master’s student at the State University of Campinas, Roberto wrote about Furtado’s early career, when the Brazilian economist wrote about music, literature, politics, and public administration.

“He was not just an economist. He was a true intellectual.”

Roberto will return to Brazil in May.