The Vagaries and Volatilities of Mainstream Development Economics: A Personal Account

Fine, Ben

Abstract

The evolution of mainstream development economics to its current approaches will be laid out. Emphasis will be placed on the shifting and uneven influences of the more general mainstream economics itself, developments within the global economy, the relations to development studies and interdisciplinarity, and the increasing scope of the World Bank in scholarship and policy perspectives. The different phases in the field marked from before and after the Washington Consensus will be unpicked, as will be its relationship to neoliberalism. A crucial insight is the extent to which there is a shifting and variable, but generally inconsistent, relationship between the ideology, scholarship, policy in practice and overall world visions projected by development economics.

Citation

Fine, B. (2025). The Vagaries and Volatilities of Mainstream Development Economics: A Personal Account. In G. Meramveliotakis, & M. Manioudis (Eds.), Sustainable Economic Development Perspectives from Political Economy and Economics Pluralism (13-28). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003349402-3

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2025
• Deposit Date: Nov 5, 2024
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 13-28
• Series Title: Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy
• Series ISSN: 1359-7914
• Book Title: Sustainable Economic Development Perspectives from Political Economy and Economics Pluralism
• ISBN: 9781032393629
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003349402-3