Introduction
Development economics as a distinct branch of economics emerged after the Second World War as newly independent countries and other poor countries sought assistance—finance, technology and policy advice—in realising their economic goals.
Broadly, development economics is directed at understanding how developing economies work and providing policy advice. New institutions were established in response to the post-colonial context—in particular, specialised UN agencies, the Bretton Woods institutions and developed countries’ aid ministries. Naturally—and particularly in the UK—this new and specialised field of economics built on the foundations of colonial economics in general and empirical knowledge of Africa and South Asia in particular. However, the new field also had important foundations in the European approach to the study of the process of industrialisation, socio-economicWe have greatly benefited from generous contributions and comments from many colleagues, including Judith Heyer, Rosemary Thorp and Barbara Harriss-White, who commented on the chapter as a whole, and Chris Adam, Cheryl Doss, Xiaolan Fu, Douglas Gollin, John Knight, Diego Sanchez-Ancochea, Francis Teal and Adrian Wood, who helped us understand their own work. Needless to say, we alone are responsible for the text, and we apologise to anyone who feels we have misrepresented them.
F. Stewart (*) • V. FitzGerald
Oxford Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, UK
e-mail: Frances.stewart@qeh.ox.ac.uk; edmund.fitzgerald@qeh.ox.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 29
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transformation and how to “catch up” with the most advanced nations. Both traditions were (and still are) represented in Oxford development economics, as we shall see.
During the war years, Oxford's Institute of Economics and Statistics (which had been established in 1935 in order to construct economic theory on the basis of a sound foundation of data analysis) gave a home to leading European refugee economists, among them founders of development economics in their own political economy tradition such as Michal Kalecki and Kurt Mandelbaum, as well as other key theorists of industrialisation such as Ernst Schumacher and Josef Steindl. The experience of British wartime controls and post-war reconstruction also provided the justification for State intervention, economic planning and basic needs provision which were to profoundly affect heterodox development economists at Oxford.
The post-war influence of Keynesianism in Oxford, through Roy Harrod and John Hicks, was also directly relevant to development economics—due to Harrod's emphasis on growth and capital accumulation on the one hand, and Hicks on incomes and employment on the other. The notion that output and productivity growth, full employment and rising living standards for the population as a whole could and should be the goal of macroeconomic policy was important to the new generation of development economists at Oxford.
Nonetheless, the Oxford chair explicitly devoted to the study of the economies of developing countries was only created in 1963, when Herbert Frankel became Professor of the Economics of Underdeveloped Countries, a post he was to hold until his retirement in 1971. His title had initially been Professor of Colonial Economic Affairs on its creation in 1944, and subsequently Commonwealth Professor of Economic Affairs. Meanwhile, the Institute of Colonial Studies became the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and eventually the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID).
Development economics at Oxford has made major contributions to the analysis of development economics worldwide. Oxford development economics was never monolithic.
For much of the time, two schools can be distinguished: one reflecting mainstream economics and using neoclassical assumptions applied to developing countries, the other more critical, adopting institutional and political economy approaches, often drawing in and working with various disciplines. The two schools had distinct intellectual roots, broadly corresponding to the colonial/neoclassical and Keynesian/ European traditions sketched above. They were occasionally in direct conflict, often worked on parallel lines, but usually cooperated, particularly in teaching the subject to generations of undergraduates and postgraduates. This chapter traces the story from 1950 to the present day.Section 2 of the chapter surveys the changing context and the institutional evolution of development economics in Oxford. Section 3 reviews the contributions of development economists which we interpret to include scholars studying the economies of what are commonly known as developing coun- tries—hence, we include those working on topics of direct relevance to developing countries, some of whom also worked on other issues and might not describe themselves as development economists. Section 4 concludes with some reflections on the nature of this field of economics, the Oxford contribution in both theory and practice, and possible directions for the future.
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