Sixty Years of Development Economics: What Have we Learned for Economic Development?

Sixty years after its entry in academic circles, development economics has now been mainstreamed in economics. It has proven itself in placing articles in top economic journals, in mobilizing a vast membership of students and researchers, in receiving important financial contributions from development actors, and in influencing decision-making in economic development. We identify five lessons for its past successes to be reproduced in the future: maintain a strong engagement with policy advice, define research priorities to secure pertinence for development, push for discoveries on themes with greater importance, extend the identification of causal relations to the level of policy recommendations, and consolidate the capacity of the state to fulfill its functions in complement with those of the market and civil society. JEL Classification: O10, N01, O47.