Development Economics Schools of Thought Research

Author: Yang Yonghua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: Development economics is a new branch of economics. Economists who enter the field of development economics are either influenced by a certain school of orthodox economics, or by their own political attitudes, or by their own theoretical perspectives. The research methods they use, the theoretical viewpoints they derive, and the policy proposals they put forward vary greatly, sometimes even completely opposite. As a result, development economics seems to be a tangled mess of economic ideas. I believe that only by introducing a school-based classification method can we untangle this mess. I propose the following hypothesis: each economist accepts the academic views of a particular school within one of the three major theoretical systems of contemporary economics, which leads to different theoretical conclusions and policy proposals in their research. These different theoretical conclusions and policy proposals form different schools within the field of development economics. In terms of their main theoretical origins, those who use theories such as neoclassical general equilibrium models form the structuralist development economics theory, those who use Smith's theorem and neoclassical market theory form the neoclassical development economics theory, those who use neoclassical political economy form the neoclassical development economics, those who use Keynesianism propose the stage theory of economic growth, and those who use Marxism propose the radical development economics theory. Whether this perspective holds true is yet to be tested by practice.