What are the economic ideas that count and why? How to perceive the connections between two domains of creation of economic knowledge - the academia and the public sphere engaging scientists, experts from international and/or national organisations, such as the IMF, the EC, the ECB, or central banks, journalists, and decision political-makers? Fourcade (2006, p. 177) refers to the concept of “epistemic community” as including “scientists and technical assistants in governmental and nongovernmental organizations, as well as individuals in multinational firms and banks, or journalists in economic newspapers and magazines diffused internationally” having in common certain beliefs about the way the economy works and being highly influential, at international and national levels, both in advocating certain policies and in influencing the way the problems are defined and agendas are settled (Hirschman and Berman, 2014). The prevalence of an economic style of reasoning as a way through which conventional economic theories exert influence outside the strict academic domain and far beyond the role of economists as scientists was previously analyzed by refereeing to the IMF Portuguese bailout. The research was able to identify the core theoretical tenets of the IMF Portuguese “adjustment program”, and disclosed a number of rhetorical devices used by the fund to account for deviations observed in respect to the goals and targets of the program. It was also acknowledged that processes of belief conservation and revision within international organizations, such as the IMF, are certainly not only the product of controversies between different theoretical economic approaches. In the case of the IMF, creditor’s interests play a conservation role that cannot be neglected. This previous research will be expanded trying to address two interrelated aims: a) to contribute to the study of the processes of circulation and appropriation of economic ideas and practices at an international level; b) to shed light on how certain ideas and practices were assimilated and appropriated by the Portuguese central bank in the context of financialization of Portuguese economy.

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circulation of economic ideas,Portuguese adjustment programme,IMF,Epistemic Community