The Authors aim to show how the classical development economics of Ragnar Nurkse's (1907-1957) generation epitomized the best development practices of the past 500 years. Secondly, they argue that the alleged death of the classical development economics and subsequent rise of the Washington Consensus has to do not so much with increasing modeling in economics, but much more with misunderstanding the reasons for East Asia's success and Latin America's demise Thirdly, they aim to indicate key areas of further research that the current development mainstream should pursue in order to re-learn how to create middle-income economies and middle-class jobs.

This paper was published as Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics, Vol No. 21.

July 15 , 2009.