Historical antecedents of development economics

The historical antecedents of development economics offer a wide range of notions, views and theories which are still of great importance for today’s development theories and policies. These notions range from division of labour to static and dynamic comparative advantages and from the link between investments and accumulation of capital to embodied technical progress and to increasing or decreasing returns. Many among the founding fathers of economics investigated developmental issues; later on, other aspects occupied the stage in economic science. The importance of the legacy of classical political economy to modern development theories is largely due to the fact that both England and France considered economic growth to be a major political issue; as it is today in so many developing countries.