Mind & Matter: Developing Pluralist Development Economics

Introductory: Almost twenty years ago, a plea for pluralist economics was published in a top journal of the discipline, the American Economic Review (1992). It was signed by various Nobel laureates, including the Dutch development economist Jan Tinbergen, several of whose inspiring lectures I had the privilege of attending as a student at Erasmus University. The main message of the plea was that many economists advocate free competition but don’t practice it in the marketplace of ideas. The minds, in other words, were rather closed and united in ignoring different perspectives when it came to exchanging ideas about the economy and economics as a discipline. The plea recognized that the great majority of economists has been trained as neoclassical economists and a small minority is either formally trained in, or has turned, like myself, into self-made heterodox economists, for which, unfortunately, there remains rather little room in top economic journals, mainstream teaching programmes and general economic policy debates: except for rare places like the Institute of Social Studies, where I found an intellectual home....