ABSTRACT
Ursula Webb Hicks and Vera Smith Lutz were two of the few scholars giving importance to money and banking issues for economic development. Hicks and Lutz can be included in a list of fifteen outstanding female researchers and practitioners in the discipline of development economics. This chapter offers a bibliographical profile of Hicks and Lutz and presents their intellectual backgrounds. It analyzes a convergence of thought between Hicks and Lutz on the nature of credit and its importance for the economic development. The chapter also presents Hicks' thought about the role of a central bank in developing countries. It talks about Lutz's theory of economic dualism and provides her evolution of thought about central banking from 1936 to 1962. Hicks published Development Finance in 1965, and Lutz, in addition to her doctoral work on free-banking practices in 1936, discussed the role of banking institutions in the debate about dualism between the north and the south of Italy.
