In the 1950s, various programs were initiated to introduce and strengthen Western economics in Latin America's academics. Of particular importance in this regard were U.S. efforts to “modernize” the curriculum in economics and to provide training grants to Latin American students to come to the United States. American resources were deployed with the goal of training new economic personnel, thereby providing a bulwark against Marxist positions, which were accorded considerable importance in the new development discourse established after World War II. Although many academics involved in the U.S. Point Four Program supported what later culminated in Walt Rostow's “modernization paradigm,” the effort also recruited neoliberal strongholds like the University of Chicago, which was hostile to the strong emphasis on state planning that dominated the developmental mainstream in the West at the time.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1546