Thirty-Five Years Later in Development Assistance: Have We Moved on, or Just Performed a Minuet?

Abstract

Development economists have presented the problems of development in varying and incompatible terms, and have influentially advocated contradictory policies. After twists and turns a broad consensus has emerged on pro-poor growth objectives and on the policy and institutional means of achieving them. But a number of important questions remain unresolved or indeterminate. Development experts, economists and others, should have the humility to recognise the country specificity of much development experience and the multiplicity of valid paths to the goal of material wellbeing. They are least likely to mislead if their advice acknowledges the likely joint importance of macroeconomic stability, reasonably efficient markets, and supportive institutions.