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The teaching of development economics : its position in the present state of knowledge : the proceedings of the Manchester Conference on Teaching Economic Development, April 1964 / edited by Kurt Martin & John Knapp.
Teaching of Development Economics, Woolton Hall, University of Manchester
In 1964 more than thirty economists met at Manchester to discuss the Teaching of Development Economics. The conference proceedings were published as Martin, K and Knapp, J. (1967) The Teaching of Development Economics Frank Cass, London.
Martin, K and Knapp, J. (1967) The Teaching of Development Economics Frank Cass, London. Contents
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- Dudley Seers: The Limitations of the Special Case
- Part One: Papers Submitted to the Conference
- PART A: THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE EDITED BY JOHN KNAPP
- Dudley Seers: Twenty Leading Questions on the Teaching of Economics
- H. Myint: Economic THeory and the Underdeveloped Countries
- E E Hagen What we do not know about the Economics of Development in Low Income Societies
- Paul Streeten: The Use and Abuses of Models in Development Planning
- Thomas Balogh: The Economics of Eudcational Planning: Sense and Nonsense
- PART B: TEACHING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT EDITED BY KURT MARTIN
- Peter Ady: Teaching Economic Development in the United Kingdom. Some Analytical Aspects
- L.J Zimmerman: Teaching Economic Development at the Institute of Social Statistics, The Hague
- Kurt Martin: Teaching Economic Development at Manchester
- Part Two: Oral Discussion
- PART A: THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE EDITED BY JOHN KNAPP
- PART B: TEACHING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT EDITED BY KURT MARTIN
Dudley Seers has been described as the "father" of the conference. In the volume it's editors argue that the conference was first proposed as a result of the stimulus provided by his article on "The Limitations of the Special Case".[1] and the "widespread feeling" that Seers arguments "needed to be discussed". His major arguments might be summarised as follows.
Economic theory tends to have a false univwersality. It was developed in and for the undertanding of a particular form of capitalism - developed industrial economies. This form was historically and geographically rare. More normally we have economies with little manufacturing industry, selling primary prodcuts on the world market in order to finance manufactured imports.
SEERS, D. The Limitations of the Special Case.
An article criticizing present-day economic theory, particularly as it is taught in the UK and US. The author is particularly influenced by the failure of economics to deal with the elimination of acute poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America. There is a widespread practice of authors and lecturers to concentrate on the economics of some developed industrial country, and worse still they often present the principles as universally valid. Text-books with quite general titles, such as Economic Principles, Banking or Public Finance, turn out to be really treatises about these matters in the United States, the United Kingdom or a typical developed economy. Years of study and work with models designed to explain these economies make it hard for economists to grasp the operation of a very different economy. Examples are given to illustrate these points.
Oddly enough, the author finds that similar criticisms apply to Marxist text-books. Here again a great deal of space is taken up by the workings of an industrial economy and foreign trade is not emphasized. Further, philosophic questions are discussed at great length and little of this is of much practical value to underdeveloped countries. Criticism of the western economies is mainly directed at situations now out of date, or worse still the theory or state of affairs is misrepresented.
The author makes some useful criticisms of the application of mathematics and statistics to economic problems. He says that unfortunately statistical methods, as usually taught, do not do much to anchor a student’s approach in reality. Examples and exercises assume that the data used are absolutely firm and reliable. The student is taught to manipulate rather than interpret how to fit curves rather than how to read them.
The article ends with a section on the degree of generalization possible. It is now possible to develop simple explanatory models for different types of economy and it is suggested that there is room for a considerable amount of systematic and comparative research. The possibilities of generalization in fields such as money, banking, fiscal structure and the economics of the firm seem limited because of the great institutional differences to be found. It is suggested that a useful guide in the reconstruction of economics could be the following modest but revolutionary slogan: Economics is the study of Economies.
