Revising Structuralism in Times of Crisis: Lance Taylor and the Neo‐Structuralist Synthesis in the 1980s

ABSTRACT This article places the work of Lance Taylor in the broader context of efforts in the 1980s to renew the structuralist tradition of development economics, into what was then newly coined as neo‐structuralism. These efforts centred around three groups: CEPAL, Lance Taylor and his team at MIT, and a group of economists based at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. The efforts included a strong focus on theoretical modelling, in which Lance Taylor played a leading role, albeit with much tension and debate from within these efforts, especially around whether to accommodate or reject neoclassical microfoundations. Taylor's position was ambiguous in this regard, although he was possibly pushed towards a more explicit heterodox position in the 1990s through the interactions and debates between these three groups in the 1980s.