Economics, social science and development

The article finds that:

• development economics nowadays is mainstream economics applied to poor countries
• mainstream economics has tremendous strengths, but also tremendous weaknesses
• other disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology and political science, have complementary strengths that suggest a role for them as equal partners in development studies and policy
• the argument for a partnership of disciplines is logical and strong. But cross-disciplinarity is not easy in practice
• cross-disciplinarity is best achieved through concrete exercises which demonstrate exactly how “two disciplines are better than one” when analyzing specific policy issues in development