Ideas in Development

E. F. Schumacher was a major pioneer of sustainable development - a new stage in the evolution of environmentalism, as the movement embraced a broader view of its mission. It sought a future for the earth that was more just, technologically progressive in the broadest sense and more environmentally protective and preventative. He formulated early versions of the precautionary principle and promoted a value-based economics.

Martha Nussbaum is quite a unique figure in the field of development economics.Trained as a philosopher and classics scholar, she is an accomplished academic and writer, having written over a dozen books with a few more waiting to be published.She has won numerous awards for her scholarship, and has received honorary degrees from twenty-five universities throughout the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia.She has held professorships at Brown, Harvard, and now at the University of Chicago where she currently serves as the Ersnt Freund Distinguished Professor of Law and Ethics.She is a feminist, human rights advocate, philosopher, classicist, and much, much more. But instead of attempting to paint a picture of her whole career and body of work (which is immense), I will focus on one example of her written work and research – the role of women in Third World development and the theories she developed therein. ¹

Gunnar Myrdal was an economist and sociologist who, for most of his career, worked toward economic development reform, devising new ways to combat economic inequality and poverty in developing and developed countries, and to address the growing economic chasm between the two.  Many of Myrdal’s theories and concepts were well ahead of the conventional ideas of his contemporaries.  Here we will explore some of his work and ideas, including his work on values and objectivity, third-world development, his theory of “virtuous and vicious circles” in economic change, the “soft state”, and his study of African-Americans in the US since the Civil War. 

Today, before writing this piece and while surfing the Web, I ran across a course guide on the topic of economic development that listed the required and recommended readings. At the end of the list was the statement - "Everything by Tim Bartik." Kind of says it all, doesn't it?

Ann Markusen's academic and research career is hard to summarize. She has done so much. She has been a Brooking Institute Economic Policy Fellow, a consultant to the Clinton Administration, the World Bank, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Berkeley, and Chicago, and to the states of Michigan, Ohio, and California. In addition, she's an expert on the steel industry, defense conversion, and an author of at least 10 books. Most recently, she has been studying the role of the arts in the overall economy and in economic development, as well as the issue of "good jobs." Currently, Ann is a professor at the University of Minnesota, Humphrey School and has just finished editing a book about business incentive reform.

Jane Jacobs, who passed away last year, was a bit of a natural force. This former housewife with only a high school degree helped to "take down" one of the most powerful men in New York City, Robert Moses, who was responsible for hundreds of acres of lively, viable, and historic communities to be bulldozed for his vision of progress. Furthermore, she wrote the single most important book in city planning of the last 50 years, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The book celebrated the diversity and vital nature of cities, but was harsh in its criticism of the city planning of the day for its "sterile uniformity."

A deeply moral and religious man, a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), William Vickrey was also described as an “economist’s economist.” Winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics , Vickrey made major contributions in the areas of urban economics, transportation planning and costing, taxation, auctions, marginal cost pricing, social choice, game theory and macroeconomics. He was also a committed proponent of full employment. Unfortunately, dying but a few days after winning his Nobel, Vickrey missed his chance to use his international stature to further his goal of “chock-full employment”.

Barrington Moore, Jr. was “old school.”  Professor Moore went to private schools as a youth, graduated from Yale, and never fought for tenure at Harvard because he lived on inherited wealth.  He spent half of each year sailing, taught only two classes per year, and required anybody wanting to take one of his courses to first demonstrate that they could write decent prose. Dedicated to seeking the truth wherever it took him, he was an intellectual’s intellectual, knew Greek, Latin and German and was conversant in the fields of history, sociology and political science.  He was an expert on the Soviet Union, revolution and totalitarianism, as well as a moralist and political theorist.  Although left-of-center, politically, he never was a fan of Communism.  Yet he tried very hard in his work to see things from a Communist point of view.

Louis Kelso was a visionary in the field of economics.  He developed/pioneered the idea of Binary Economics as a new way of understanding capital and its role in industrial production and the production of wealth, and was the originator of Employee Stock Ownership Plans.  He subscribed to a ‘non-conformist’ form of capitalism that believed in a capitalist society where ownership was widely distributed throughout society, and co-authored The Capitalist Manifesto with philosopher Mortimer Adler, which highlights many of his main economic theories.¹