Rethinking development economics

I have spent much of this week writing a critique of the argument that the 2008 crisis propelled the developed economies into a new era (I will post the finished article next week). I was therefore particularly interested to come across a paper by F Halsey Rogers, a senior economist at the World Bank, on The Global Financial Crisis and Development Thinking.

In broad terms the paper confirms my impression that the crisis reinforced the Post-Washington Consensus (which emphasises the needs for states and markets in developing countries to work together) rather than leading to the creation of a new set of ideas. As he puts it:

“In short, there has already been widespread rethinking of the neoliberal approach to development in the development community, including in the corridors of power, since at least the mid-1990s.”

The article also includes many useful references.