tinue to pay on the principal of its external debt, although keeping up interest payments. Brazil did not really feel that they had much to fear, because, as they pointed out, they were receiving hardly any new money anyway ("Living", 1987, pp. 26-27).
Brazilian economic policy is, to a great extent, based on the principles of developmental economics, which are not held in high regard by the developed economies. Developmental economics rose from the ashes of the Second World War, and of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Developmental economists recognized a difference between growth and development, whereas more traditional economists tended to view the two phenomena as one and the same.
Developmental economists viewed growth in positive terms, while development was viewed in normative terms. As a normative concept, development included growth, but it also included distributional and structural change (Gwartney, Stroup, & Studenmund, 1980, p. 793).
Simplified to the extreme, positive philosophy may be said to deal with life as it is, while normative philosophy may be said to deal with life as it should be. In this latter context, normative philosophy is sometimes characterized as idealist. Positive economics deals with the explanation and prediction of actual resource allocation decisions made by consumers, producers, and, to a lesser extent, governments (Friedman, 1953, p. 42). By contrast, normative economics deals with the development of the criteria by which resource allocation decisions, together with the methods employed in their making, should be assessed (Sassone, 1986, p. 66).
Developmental economics sprung from the normative fold. Developmental economists recognized that basic differences existed between developed economies and those of undeveloped countries (Lal, 1984, p. 23). They recognized that such differences would likely insure that real development would not likely occ...