United Nations institution created in response to concerns about unequal exchange that troubled underdeveloped economies, where Prebisch’s thesis of the centre and periphery would be extended outside the region to all underdeveloped economies, known then as the G77. During his time at UNCTAD, Prebisch worked tirelessly to build a UN institution that “had teeth.” 190 It was at the first UNCTAD conference that ‘ Towards a New Trade Policy for Developmen t’ (also known as the Prebisch report) was published. The central argument of the paper was characteristically Prebischian: a “trade gap” 191 existed because the rate of economic development in poorer countries, which was primarily determined by the level of producer goods imported and by the level of aggregate investment in the economy, was limited by the unequal levels of exchange those countries experienced. To combat this, the report put forth a proposal for developed countries to commit, at minimum, one percent of GDP towards providing international aid, and to promote commodity agreements which would help protect the terms of trade for poorer countries. The idea of a trade gap, greatly inspired by the work of Prebisch, permeated throughout all of the early debates on international development and dominated the initial UNCTAD conferences. Prebisch’s status as a powerful international economist with clout certainly aided the cause of the G77, but his ideas appear to have failed to make a long-lasting impact on the economic development of underdeveloped countries. The trade gap theory has been widely contested, coming under severe criticism from a number of economic thinkers. The British development economist, P. T. Bauer, dismissed 190 Historiador escreve biografia de Raúl Prebisch, [online video], 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI-w-oHRo-c, (accessed 28 th October 2015) 191 Robert Bideleux, “The Political Economy of Latin America, 1950s -2010s: From ‘Structuralism’ (Alias ‘Developmentalism’ or ‘Populism’) To Neoliberal ‘Shock Therapy’ and ‘Structural Adjustment’ (The ‘Washington Consensus’) to ‘Neostructuralism’ (Alias ‘Neo -D evelopmentalism’ or ‘Neo - populism’)” Swansea University 2015, page 5.
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