ABSTRACT
After the Second World War, the poverty and backwardness of some of the world countries became extremely conspicuous. Many reasons, including colonial exploitation, devastation by war, war-induced inflation and the like, could possibly be said to be responsible for such a sad state of affairs in many countries. It is precisely at this time that the subject of development economics (DE) came into being to study the problems of backwardness and underdevelopment of these nations. To be precise, DE started as a subdiscipline of economics in the early 1950s. However, over the decades it had a number of paradigm shifts, and the enthusiasm and gusto with which the subject took off in the 1950s and through the 1960s became somewhat mellowed in subsequent decades.
