From Seers to Sen: The Meaning of Economic Development

Abstract

How has the meaning of economic development changed during the 20 years of UNU-WIDER’s existence? This chapter compares perspectives on the meaning of development economics in the late 1970s and early 1980s, just before WIDER’s inception, to contemporary perspectives. To narrow the focus from what would otherwise be an unmanageable task, I concentrate on two economists representative of these two periods. Two markers are, Dudley Seers (1969; 1979) for the earlier period, and Amartya Sen (1999) for the later. Here the meaning of development also encompasses measures and strategies of development and approaches to its study. Moreover, I examine work beyond these markers to provide more detail of the two men’s views. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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