This book results from the interest of a researcher group from La Pampa National University (UNLPam) to contribute to the study of the historical process of economic and social development of La Pampa (Argentina). For this purpose, the chapters address different problems associated with the analysis of a space that, integrated into the capitalist economy in the late nineteenth century, had a less satisfactory performance from the 1930s onward. This text has been organized into two parts. The first one, entitled ‘Development, policies and actors’, focuses on debates and public policies to foster economic development in the mid-twentieth century. The second part, entitled ‘Development, welfare and population’, combines two studies that complement thematically and chronologically, previous analyses, and incorporate social and demographic dimensions.