Neoclassical economic theory and development economics have failed to deliver the much higher rates of growth and overall development that they promised would result from the freeing up of markets. This book takes issue with the nostrums that underlie free market policies in both developing countries and the rich industrial nations.

The contributors want to rethink economics as a discipline and development as a process. Economics needs to redefine many of its concepts to reflect the complex realities of functioning economies. And development needs to be reconceived as a process of social change, in which each country's particular history and institutional workings take centre stage. They point the way to a much more sophisticated understanding of economic development. The ultimate prize, if theory can be grounded in a more accurate analysis of social change, is policies that really will deliver higher economic growth and greater social justice worldwide.