Crouching beliefs, hidden biases: The rise and fall of growth narratives

Reda Cherif, Marc Engher and Fuad Hasanov

World Development, 2024, vol. 173, issue C

Abstract: The debate among economists about an optimal growth recipe has been the subject of competing “narratives.” We identify-four major growth narratives using the text analytics of IMF country reports over 1978–2019. The narrative “Economic Structure”—services, manufacturing, and agriculture—has been on a secular decline overshadowed by the “Structural Reforms”—competitiveness, transparency, and governance. We observe the rise and fall of the “Washington Consensus”—privatization and liberalization—and the rise to dominance of the “Washington Constellation,” a collection of many disparate terms such as productivity, tourism, and inequality. We interpret these changes through the lens of a nexus of the changing pool of economic ideas, the power structure within organizations, and the shocks that trigger a shift of narratives and their translation into policies.

Keywords: Narratives; Industrial policy; Growth; Manufacturing; Services; Washington consensus; Structural reforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N1 O0 O25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Working Paper: Crouching Beliefs, Hidden Biases: The Rise and Fall of Growth Narratives (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:173:y:2024:i:c:s0305750x23000645

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106246

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