Let's not forget that the 50s and 60s were a period during which math 
was emerging as the language of economics and also in which the 
proliferation of sub-fields was occurring.

Development, to the mathematicians, became growth and its future in the 
economics profession was largely dictated by the requirement that growth 
theories be represented mathematically.

Development to the proliferators became stage theories and expressions 
of claims that traditional economic principles could not be applied to 
the "underdeveloped" economies. The particular "cultural," "social" and 
"historical" characteristics of each potentially developing society had 
to be accounted for.

It took many years for the more traditional economists to recognize that 
math was an inappropriate way to describe the prerequisites for growth 
and that claims of historical particularlism were mainly manifestations 
of the elitism that characterized the progressive movement that gave 
birth to this idea.

I refer especially to the work of Peter Bauer and Hernando de Soto but 
also to the wealth of empirical data, including the studies of 
comparable societies that were violently separated, like Korea and China 
vs. Taiwan.


On 2/9/2011 9:39 AM, Tony Brewer wrote:
> The key to the emergence of development economics, split off from the 
> economics of developed countries, in the 1950s or thereabouts is 
> surely the collapse of empires and the creation of very many new, 
> poor, underdeveloped countries, hence a demand for policy advice, 
> training, etc.
>
> The ideological function of the division between developed and 
> underdeveloped countries was in part to differentiate the product of 
> the development economists who could claim that underdeveloped 
> countries were different and hence needed the services of the 
> new-fangled development economists and not the old-style mainstream 
> economists. Also it served to allow them to advocate central planning 
> and the like, which would not have been acceptable in developed 
> countries (or, specifically, the USA). (This paragraph is a bit 
> flippant - there is a lot of interest to be said about development 
> economics as a phenomenon of decolonization, but no space to say it 
> here.)
>
> Tony Brewer ([log in to unmask])
>
>

-- 
Pat Gunning
Professor of Economics
Melbourne, Florida
http://www.nomadpress.com/gunning/welcome.htm