----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
I suspect that the idea of an economics of 'underdeveloped' (later, 'developing')
countries is a product of the 1940s and 1950s. It entails (a) that developed and
underdeveloped countries are different and need a different economics and (b) that
underdeveloped countries are sufficiently alike for there to be a single economics of
underdeveloped countries, rather than an economics of India, of Africa, etc. Before about
1950 there was just one economics, as there is again now (since about 1980 (?) when
development economics as a separate subject fizzled out). So the first generation of
developmenteconomists created a separate subject where there had been none for them to be
trained in. It would be interesting to track the process by which this separate sub-
discipline came into existence, and the context in which it happened.
 
Roger Sandiland's mail argues that Lauchlin Currie never accepted the idea of a separate
economics of underdeveloped countries, but many (most people in the field?) did.
 
Tony Brewer 
 
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]