Some claim to be encouraging a plurality of views and democratic debate. The cacophony of views is breathtaking. And neither the blooming of hundred flowers nor their being cut down did China any good. But each of these doctrines in economic theory and development economics has been like the fashions in the Paris haute couture salons - the hemlines going up or falling down every year to force people to throw away last year's clothes and buy this year's. It would, however, be unfair to blame international functionaries for changing their positions and views to advance their own careers and advocating the policies favoured by the dominant powers.
Academics are probably no different.
Prof. Dornbusch has expressed considerable scepticism at national efforts to regulate and restrict capital flows, and was one of the prominent speakers at the 1998 Davos symposium. He noted that it is one thing to liberalize imports of capital goods and intermediate goods, but Milky Way candy bars are a high-gross item in the Mexican imports, for example, and no one would argue that they are essential to growth strategy. US academic Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati, a free trade ideologue, pushed the trade liberalization concept and vigorously lobbied the government in New Delhi before Punta Del Este to agree to the launching of the new trade round, with services and intellectual property issues. After the recent financial crisis and witnessing the effects of capital liberalization, he has changed his views.