Modern Economics in Search of the Paradigm of Socio-Economic Development

Abstract

The issue of economic development has been present at least since the birth of classic economics at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, although the conception of development itself was long limited to the idea of growth. Only later, the achievements of the so-called development economics allowed scholars studying socioeconomic changes to notice a strong relationship between quality factors and development. The purpose of this article was to follow the course of the evolution which development economics has taken since its beginning until today, because the lesson that history teaches permits a wiser look into the future and provides an opportunity to build development strategies which are more adequate for actual social problems and goals. Consequently, a definition of the paradigm of modern socio-economic development becomes clearly possible. A task thus formulated requires an adoption of a specific plan to be able to carry out appropriate analyses. Therefore, the Author first defines development economics, and then goes on to describe the individual stages of its evolution, which will permit a synthetic overview of its most important theories, and thirdly, the key elements of the paradigm of modern economic and social development.