ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: The rise and fall of Development Economics in the history of Economic Thought
Author: Gualerzi Davide, Sunna Claudia
Davide Gualerzi and Claudia Sunna Development Economics, understood as a sub-discipline of economic theory, it is identified in the literature as a homogeneous body of theory since the Fifties. This generalization serves to the main purpose to distinguish Development Economics from the coeval economic growth theory that started with the seminal article of Robert Solow (1956) on “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth”. Using this definition, therefore, it is possible to distinguish two parallel lines of research that come from the fifties to the present day. Development Economics is related to the study of concrete development problems and to the shaping of more effective policies for less advanced economies while growth theory has focused on the analytical definition of development processes. This reconstruction and interpretation of the literature that deals with development issues is simplistic because it underestimates the theoretical and analytical contribution given from a group of economists in the period of "high development theory" between the fifties and the seventies (Krugman 1992). During this period, around the theoretical, analytical and empirical reflection on development issues focused a large group of economists that addresses the wide-ranging theme of development by introducing new categories, by using new research methods and, above all, by applying directly in the countries concerned development policies arising from their theoretical analysis. This body of theory is largely forgotten today. The exception is, to some extent, Latin America, where that tradition is still alive, although not dominating economic analysis and policy. The analysis of underdevelopment, backwardness and catching-up confronts today a profoundly changed world economy. The penetration of technology and modern production into what used to be called the “Third World” has now run a long course. Furthermore, we have seen phenomena of development that have drastically changed the simplified counter-position of development and underdevelopment, therefore redefining the entire question of centers and peripheries of the world economy. In the 1980s we have seen the rise of the Asian Tigers, from the 1990s the rise of the so-called emerging economies. Today the large economies in Asia and Latin America, presents formidable challenges for the study of development and underdevelopment. These phenomena have dramatically modified the perspective on development and catching-up. We think that looking back at high development theory give us a more satisfactory framework capable of accounting for the question of emerging economies. This respond to the need to articulate theoretical views in a historical perspective on development.
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