Revisiting Hirschman on Development Assistance and Unbalanced Growth

David Ellerman ()
Additional contact information
David Ellerman: Economics Department, University of California-Riverside

Eastern Economic Journal, 2004, vol. 30, issue 2, 311-331

Abstract: It is useful from time to time to revisit the pioneers in a field. The richness of their original thought is often diminished as new specialists in a field are educated or, rather, trained. Stylized caricatures and toy models out-compete nuanced multidisciplinary narratives in the competition for shelf-space in textbooks. After the students ingest the textbooks and go forth in the discipline as properly trained specialists, they are hard put just to keep up with the latest publications and to do their own bit to push the frontier forward. Outside of those inclined to intellectual history, the specialists have little occasion to go back to revisit the pioneers. In the field of economic development, Albert Hirschman is perhaps the prime example of a thinker who has deliberately avoided the toy models that can be readily absorbed by graduate students and their professors - sometimes to the chagrin of the latter.

Keywords: Assistance; Development; Growth; Hirschman (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B31 F35 O10 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/eej/Archive/Volume30/V30N2P311_331.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:30:y:2004:i:2:p:311-331

Access Statistics for this article

Eastern Economic Journal is currently edited by Cynthia A. Bansak, St. Lawrence University and Allan A. Zebedee, Clarkson University

More articles in Eastern Economic Journal from Eastern Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross ().