ABSTRACT
Development economics, which appeared at the end of World War II, was concerned with the study of 'backward' economies that had, according to these pioneers, certain specific characteristics that distinguished them from the economies of developed countries and that justified the creation of a new discipline. In the 1950s and 1960s the field of economics was dominated by the Keynesian school, both from the theoretical point of view and from that of the conduct of economic policies. The school of rational expectations became dominant in the field of political economics in the early 1970s. During the 1950s and 1960s, the field of political economy was dominated, as people have emphasised, by the Keynesian school, which maintained that the fixity of prices prevented the markets from being balanced. The beginning of the 1980s represented an important turning point for Southern countries.
