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3
Models and Metaphors
Page 67
In the previous two lectures I offered personal views of the history of thought in two fields that were
strangely unsuccessful in influencing mainstream thought in economics. Development economics, or
more specifically the set of ideas that I call ''high development theory," had a huge initial influence. But
it then faded away, virtually disappearing from economic discourse. Economic geography never really
got its foot inside the door to this day the silence of standard economics on such subjects as the location,
size, or even existence of cities is startling.
In each case, I have argued, the basic problem was one neither of ignorance nor of bias. Economists did
not abandon the insights of development economics because they had forgotten about the subject; they
did not ignore the ideas of the geographers because to acknowledge space would somehow conflict with
free-market prejudices. No, these fields were left untilled because the terrain was seen as unsuitable for
the tools at hand. Economists realized that they could not model Big Push development or almost
anything interesting about economic geography with the kind of rigor that was increasingly expected of
them, and so they simply left the subjects alone.
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