African economic development: Evidence, theory, policy
David Booth
Abstract
It is many years since the subject of African economic development has been treated with the best insights and methods that modern social science has to offer. Cramer, Sender, and Oqubay have set a new standard in this respect. Writing from the perspective of a statistically aware, multi-methods economics, they take aim at both unjustified pessimism about Africa’s development prospects and the naïve belief—propagated by international non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies among others—that progress in Africa is somehow exempt from the rules that have governed capitalist progress everywhere else in the world. The book (covered by OUP’s open access scheme) has 10 chapters, divided between four parts. Part I describes The Context, with a first look at the data and a commitment to clearing away the fog of conventional ‘common sense’ in development economics. This phrase refers to the significant areas of convergent policy advice between the supposedly opposed...