The World Bank and the Poor

The authors of a recent textbook on the Economics of Development (P. A. Yotopoulos and J . B. Nugent, 1976) chose as the title of their first chapter 'The Record of Economic Development and Disillusionment with Development Economics'. It is striking that dissatisfaction with this young branch of the tree of economics has become so strong that a textbook treatment of the subject matter takes Disillusionment as its point of departure. True, the Disillusion­ ment chapter is followed by many other chapters - there is, after all, some­ thing to be said on development economics that is worth saying - but the wording has changed, and frequently the focus as well, in comparison to the development economics of the 1950s and 'sixties. Dissatisfaction and disillusionment may be interpreted optimistically as an inevitable stage in the coming-of-age process of development economics. Others may say that the search for a new paradigm is the core of the problem. At any rate, there is no room for complacency. It cannot be denied that at least part of the 'early' development theory came into being as a justification ex post of policy measures that, for a variety of reasons, were judged desirable or essen­ tial.