The terms used to describe the poorer countries of the world have also changed, from the Third World to emerging markets to the global south. But the faith among development economists that One Economics Recipe Will Rule Them All has persisted.

The history of development economics, since its inception, has been one of fads and intellectual bubbles. For decades, the U.S. government and international financial institutions have glommed on to a singular recipe for economic development, convinced that their latest, greatest idea would work. These have included the “Big Push” of massive public and private goods investments back in the 1960s and the neoliberal Washington Consensus that dominated post-Cold War thinking.

The history of development economics, since its inception, has been one of fads and intellectual bubbles. For decades, the U.S. government and international financial institutions have glommed on to a singular recipe for economic development, convinced that their latest, greatest idea would work. These have included the “Big Push” of massive public and private goods investments back in the 1960s and the neoliberal Washington Consensus that dominated post-Cold War thinking.

The terms used to describe the poorer countries of the world have also changed, from the Third World to emerging markets to the global south. But the faith among development economists that One Economics Recipe Will Rule Them All has persisted.

In the post-neoliberal moment of 2025, perhaps some epistemic humility is called for in the economics profession. There is now an elite consensus that the neoliberal model of economic development was far too cookie-cutter in its approach—but not much agreement on what comes next.

Perhaps then, the moment has come to return to a more contextual, country-specific approach. Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik has been a longtime fan of this concept, blasting development “big think,” arguing in 200