This essay suggests that there is a body of Latin Americanstructuralist economic theory which possesses distinctive characteristicswhile having a family resemblance to other institutionalist schools ofthought, and which is based on an original approach to economic value.The founders of structuralism conceived a systemic, multidimensional anddynamic approach. They applied it to the study of improvements in, and thesocial distribution of, labour productivity generated in the central economiesand the effects of these on the societies of the periphery. This outlookchallenges the notion of markets as self-regulating systems that returnto stable equilibrium positions, presenting them rather as a quantitativeexpression of the national or international power status of contractingparties. Different development styles and processes progressively alter thepower structure of social systems and these changes are reflected in thedynamic of relative market prices.