Over the last 50 years, GDP per capita has been multiplied by more than 10 in East Asia, 4 in South Asia, but only by 2 in Latin America and 1.5 in Africa. Other development indicators point to similar disparities. Can development economics explain such differences in development experiences? Could it remedy them?
This field of economics has very much evolved during the last four or five decades, from planning and optimal growth in the 1960s and 1970s, to endogenous growth in the 1990s, to randomized control trials or the political economy of institutions in the 2000s. Where do we stand today? Do we explain better observed historical and contemporaneous development facts today?
Where should further research be heading? And what kind of advice should we give today to policy makers and politicians willing to accelerate or improve the economic development of their country? Such are the general questions to be discussed in this workshop by several leading researchers on the basis of some of their recent work.