Development economics entered the MPS agenda via Mises’s 1951 proposal

Evidence

MPS members (at the London School of Economics, in Freiburg and Chicago, for example) were already engaged in the ensuing development debates when the issue was first addressed at the fourth MPS conference in Beauvallon, France in 1951. Similar to the way that the MPS conferences addressed many issue areas (“Liberalism and Christianity,” “Liberalism and European Integration,” “Liberalism and Socialism,” “Liberalism and Agriculture,” “Liberalism and Democracy,” Liberalism and Racialism,” “Liberalism and Colonialism”; see Liberaal Archief 2004), a panel on “Liberalism and the Underdeveloped Countries” was organized to apply “neoliberal norms and principled beliefs” to the field of development. The novel topic was originally proposed by Ludwig von Mises, according to the September 7, 1950 circular on the preceding MPS council meeting (MPS Circular 1950, quoted in Steiner 2005). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1272

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did Mises, famed for opposing central planning, champion the underdeveloped-countries topic? The chapter’s opening question.
• XREF: connects to: The MPS constituted an early intellectual network of development economics — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1289; Development economics was a persistent MPS concern, not a marginal one — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1338

Broader Connections

• Development economics was a persistent MPS concern, not a marginal one #corroborates (0.88) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1338
• The MPS constituted an early intellectual network of development economics #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1289