Abstract
In the immediate aftermath of the onset of the global financial crises, attention was focused on the weaknesses in the borrowing countries; the suggestion was that, by pursuing unsound policies and indulging in "crony capitalism" these countries had brought the ills upon themselves. Today, we recognize that not only was that original indictment unfair, paying undue attention to the problems originating in the developing countries, and ignoring the fact that for every borrower there is a lender, and the lenders have as much responsibility for bad loans as do the borrowers; but that even countries with sound economic policies can be buffeted by the turbulence in international policies. But while policy discussions have thus moved in eighteen months by an amount that, under more normal circumstances, might take years, the intellectual foundations have not - and have not needed to - change as much, an in this there is an important lesson. The eleventh Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, which has sought over the years to narrow the gap between policy and economic science, provides an opportune occasion to begin to address perhaps the most cataclysmic set of events to face the world economy since the Great Depression. The purpose of this paper is not to revisit old differences, but to put the entire debate in a broader perspective, linking it to ongoing strands in economics, focusing in particular on six key issues.