Antonio Manuel Pinto Barbosa, Economist and Official

Antonio Manuel Pinto Barbosa (1917-2006), economist and official, was included by Expresso Revista among the 100 Portuguese who shaped the 20th century. He has been biographed by Joao Cesar das Neves and Francisco Azevedo e Silva in a book published in 1999, whose chapter 7 calls him the dean of economists, but his activity at Nova School of Business and Economics, which he founded in 1978 and where he was honored in 1989, and especially at the Lisbon Academy of Sciences are less known. This paper attempts to fill the gap and focuses on the problem of balance of payments disequilibria in Europe and in the world about both of which he worried greatly since they interact dangerously with budget imbalances, mortgaging the wealth of nations. It reproduces the academic eulogy presented at the joint session of the Academy where the author was received to chair 18L, the response by Pedro Soares Martinez, dean of the law and political science section (chair 11L), at the same session and a testimony by Manuel Jacinto Nunes, who became dean of Portuguese economists and of the economics and finance section (chair 8L). Three annexes with references, his personal file at the Academy and excerpts from recent contributions to the analysis of payments imbalances in the Euro Zone in the spirit of Pentti Kouri (1949-2009) are also included.