When “broadening” is a step back

Some useful references on Duncan Green’s blog for Oxfam. He point to what looks likely to be a key paper by Paul Shaffer of the University of Toronto on the “broadening” of the definition of poverty from the Real-World Economics Review (formerly the Post Autistic Economics Review). As I have alluded to in the past (see 27 September 2008 post), and I will expand on in the future, this represents a retrograde step. Green also points to another paper on the increasingly influential “growth diagnostics” approach to development favoured by Dani Rodrik of Harvard and others.