Free marketeers lack ambition

A useful reminder of the limitations of the free market critique of growth scepticism. Prakash Loungani, the chief of policy communications in the external relations department of the International Monetary Fund, has written a review of William Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden in the Cato Journal 26 (2) Spring / Summer 2006. Easterly and indeed Loungani are worth reading as they often make astute criticisms of the development orthodoxy represented by the likes of Jeffrey Sachs. But the essential thrust of their criticism is that Sachs and his followers are too ambitious. In fact the opposite is true: the problem with the contemporary development orthodoxy is that it is not nearly ambitious enough.