Keynesian Models of Economic Development and Their Limitations: an Analysis in the Light of Gunnar Myrdal’s ‘Asian Drama’

Abstract

Modern economics and modern economic models originated in the decade of the 1930s when the pressing current problem, namely the world depression and mass unemployment in the industrial countries, became a matter of great concern to everybody including the economists. One man of genius arose among those living at that time, John Maynard Keynes, who managed to see beyond the conventional, traditionally accepted concepts. He developed a new mode of thinking, which he expressed in terms of a model — at least an implicit model, which some of the people working with him made explicit. This model was found extremely helpful in discarding traditional ideas and in finding a solution on the intellectual plane to the problem of mass unemployment in industrial countries: a solution which has quite successfully withstood the test of time, in policy application as well as in theoretical terms.

From UN Asian Institute for Economic Development and Planning Occasional Papers, Dec 1969 (also published as IDS Communications 54 by the Institute of Developmental Studies).