ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: The making of a development economist: Paul Rosenstein-Rodan and the birth of development economics
Author: Alacevich Michele
This paper proposal is part of the session “Some historical controversies on the role of capital in development economics” Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan (1902-1985) occupies a prominent position in the exclusive lofty heights of the “pioneers” of postwar development economics: not only is he considered the father — or at least a very early proponent — of the “Big Push” and “balanced growth” theories, which soon became the development orthodoxy of the postwar years, but also his 1943 article “Problems of Industrialisation of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe” is widely believed to be the birth certificate of the discipline of development economics (Pomfret 1992; Krugman 1992; 1994). Yet, no analysis of his long scholarly career exists. This paper is an attempt to put together for the first time an intellectual biography of Rosenstein-Rodan, and provide a first assessment, based on copious archival sources from Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Chatham House, the World Bank, Banca d’Italia, and MIT, of his formation and career as a development economist. An analysis of Rosenstein-Rodan’s work is particularly relevant to the ESHET 2015 conference theme, Great Controversies in Economics, as Rosenstein-Rodan’s theory of “balanced growth” not only became, as mentioned above, the development orthodoxy of the postwar years, but was also the target of a frontal attack waged by other prominent pioneers of development, such as Albert Hirschman and Paul Streeten, who supported the so-called “unbalanced growth” approach. The “balanced growth” versus “unbalanced growth” theoretical controversy, as Ian M.D. Little wrote, “was the most prominent of all in the development literature of the 1950s” (Little 1982, p. 44), and syntheses, readers, and encyclopedias on development economics consider it a milestone in the foundational years of the discipline. Tellingly, for Paul Krugman (1994, p. 40; see also Krugman 1993) “the glory days of high development theory” span from the 1943 article by Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, which inaugurated the literature on balanced growth, to 1958, the date of publication of Albert Hirschman’s book and Paul Streeten’s article, which attacked it. This paper will examine that foundational controversy as a fundamental episode in the development of Rosenstein-Rodan’s economic thought. Also, it will discuss how that controversy reverberated in Rosenstein-Rodan’s later work, as in his career he went back to the concept of big push several times (e.g., Rosenstein-Rodan 1957 on Italy, adapted in Rosenstein-Rodan 1961 on Latin America; see also Rosenstein-Rodan 1984). Finally, it will show how development economics as a disciplinary field was shaped by the work of specific institutions and scholarly networks.
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