Development Economics

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Dudley Seers, "The Limitations of the Special Case," Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Economics & Statistics 25 (1963): 77-98

Distinguishes monoeconomics--the view that there is just one economics, captured by neoclassical microeconomics and Keynesian macroeconomics with micro-foundations, which is equally valid everywhere--from dual economics: the view that poor economies--in which 80% of the world's people live--follow different economic principles than do rich economies. Memorably says that calling the principles of monoeconomics "The Principles of Economics" is like calling "The Principles of Horse Zoology" "The Principles of Zoology."

Albert O. Hirschman, "The Rise and Decline of Development Economics," Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (Cambridge UP, 1981), pp. 1-24

Famously interprets the history of development economics in terms of the monoeconomics-dual economics distinction. Says that genuine development economics was committed to dual economics, and when that was rejected, so necessarily was genuine development economics.

Paul Krugman, "The Fall and Rise of Development Economics," later reprinted in slightly revised form in Krugman, Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (MIT Press, 1997): 1-31

A sympathetic monoeconomist's take. Urges that while the dual economists were wrong about different principles, they were right about the fact that poor economies have different institutional contexts than rich economies. Argues that the decline of traditional development economics was due to its practitioners' inability to build formal models.

Ian M. D. Little, "On Different Kinds of Economics," Economic Development: Theory, Policy, and International Relations (Basic Books, 1982): 16-26. [Available on Moodle.]

Two types of development economics: structuralism (which endorses state-Led development) and neo-classical (let the free market decide)

Peter J. Hammond, "Some Assumptions of Contemporary Neoclassical Economic Theology," in Joan Robinson and Modern Economic Theory, ed. George Feiwel (NYU Press, 1989): 186-257. [Available on Moodle.]

A famous critique, by a neoclassical economist, of some of the incredible assumptions that fundamentalist neoclassical monoeconomists tend to make along with their neoclassical laws.

Dani Rodrik, "The Global Governance of Trade As If Development Really Mattered," One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth (Princeton UP, 2007): 213-236

From another even more sympathetic monoeconomist. Argues that world trade should be governed so that development-as-rising-living-standards is the end of such trade, and also a constraint on the means. Trade should not be governed as it now is--with the sole aims of maximizing trade and promoting more of it. For to govern it that way is to invite the skeptical challenge that development is neo-colonialism. An alternative to development-as-freedom's response to the neo-colonialism critique.