This paper attempts to understand Asian Drama in the context of the development debates of its time, and in terms of the sensibilities that Gunnar Myrdal - the brilliant economic theorist and philosopher of knowledge, and Swedish politician - brought to the conceptualization of the problems and...

Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama in 1968, a work which made important analytical contributions to our understanding of development but was deeply pessimistic about Asia's future prospects. Since then, contrary to Myrdal's expectations, Asia's development has been remarkable, although...

This paper is essentially autobiographical and describes Erik Thorbecke's journey through the history of development economics between the 1950s and the present. The paper consists of four parts. First, an introduction reviews briefly his professional career as a development economist and his...

This paper explores how the concept of resilience has been used in development studies. Set amidst the rise of resilience in sustainable development, it offers insights for scholars and policy-makers, alike. Sampling 419 resilience-oriented journal articles from 2017-22, it uses Kuhnian...

We provide a formal model of entrepreneurship in human development. The framework is provided by the capabilities approach (CA). Hence we extend not only the conceptualisation of entrepreneurship in development, but the reach of the CA into entrepreneurship. From a CA view, entrepreneurship is...

This paper reviews the history and controversies associated with capital account management. It first looks at the transition from the acceptance at the Bretton Woods conference of capital account regulations as a normal policy instrument to the liberalization of the capital account, first in...

According to a standard economic theory, capital should flow from rich capital-abundant countries to poor capital-scarce countries. However, a reverse pattern has prevailed in the world economy. This is the so-called Lucas paradox. In addition, it has been shown that counterintuitively there is...

This paper reviews the main methodological innovations in Asian Drama. It considers whether Myrdal's perspectives have been adopted by development analysts, and where fresh thinking is needed, particularly in the light of changes occurring in the half-century since he wrote Asian Drama. The...

In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of 'what works' in development policy. This paper focuses on a core topic...