The nature of the “principal cyclical centre”

In the author’s opinion, Prebisch’s greatest contribution was his idea of a structural rift in the international economy caused by the slow spread of technical progress and kept in being by the international division of labour which existed at that time. According to this approach, external trade was no longer viewed as an extension of the domestic economy but was considered to have a dynamism of its own which depended on the linkages between the central economies and the efficiency of the principal centre in exercising its “regulatory” functions.