Sergio,

Arndt's book is an excellent starting-point. However it doesn´t pay  
enough attention to the role played by the 1958 collection of essays  
"The Economics of Underdevelopment" (ed. by Agarwala and Singh), which  
defined the then new field of development economics. An important  
recent source about a key-figure is E. Dosman's 2008 "The life and  
times of Raul Prebisch 1901-1986". It is worth noting that, although  
development economics emerged as a separate field in the 1940s and  
1950s, the topic, of course, had attracted the attention of economists  
long before that. See on that the 2005 volume "Pioneers of economic  
development: great economists on development", ed. by J. K. Sundaram.

Best,

Mauro

Citando Sergio Silva-Castaneda <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear all,
>
> I'm wondering if any of you can point me to something recent about the
> origin of the idea of economic development. I have read H.W. Arndt´s *The
> History of an Idea (1987) *and a very interesting collection of papers
> edited by Frederick Cooper and Randal Packard called *International
> Development and the Social Sciences (1997) *But I´d like to know if there is
> anything more recent that any of you can recommend. Thanks in advance for
> any help.
>
> Sergio
>
> --
> Sergio Silva Castaneda
> Lecturer on History and Social Studies
> Harvard University
>
> CGIS-South Building
> 1730 Cambridge Street
> Cambridge, MA 02138
> Room S425
> 617.496.4780
>



-- 
Mauro Boianovsky
Department of Economics
Universidade de Brasilia CP 4302
Brasilia DF 70910-900
Brazil
Fax: 55 61 33402311
Phone: 55 61 31076583