Are Brazilian economic master’s programs pluralist? Mandatory lectures

Abstract

This study analyses Brazilian economics master’s programs and catalogues them into orthodox, pluralist-orthodox, pluralist, pluralist-heterodox or heterodox programs. There is an explanation on why using five categories instead of the three classical expected (orthodox, pluralist and heterodox). To do that, analyses every mandatory lecture that the program teaches. Catalogues the documents in one of the three classical classifications and then catalogues the programs. In total there are 162 course curriculum analysis. This paper does not analyze mathematics and econometrics course curriculums as it believes it is not possible to classify these courses on the three classical classifications. To classify the courses there is a list of which subjects would be counted as heterodox and which subjects as orthodox on the most popular lectures (macroeconomics and microeconomics). This study also analyses the paper of other academics that did this same work of cataloguing every Brazilian program into orthodox, heterodox or pluralist, it finds different results as the methodology for classifying is different in each study. At the end it suggests reasons for the differences and rise questions for future studies.