In this paper from The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne provide a brief overview of the history of development economics (i.e., understanding what makes rich countries rich) while further analyzing what role, if any, the economist has in guiding public policy on these matters:
We have provided a reconsideration of the role of the economist in economic development. In doing so, we first considered the evolution of development economics to understand how the role of the economist has become what it is today. We argued that economists and policy makers alike overlook the role that indigenous institutions play in economic development. We concluded that the informal institutions, which underlie formal institutions, cannot be imposed from above but must develop from the ground up. Imposing formal institutions that do not align with the underlying mētis will not be effective. We also provided a framework for understanding why the conventional view of the economist in economic development persists.
