growth of our understanding of economic backwardness and development. A re- cent textbook in the field puts the matter this way:

theorizing is essential to make empirical research productive. The focus of these remarks upon the latter does not imply that there is, or should be, a sharp dichotomy between the two. The dominant problem in our contempo- rary economic studies of economic development, however, is that hypotheses sug- gested by armchair theorizing or almost intuitive observation have tended to out- strip empirical verification. The result is that theoretical and policy controver- sies continue to rage, while we suspect that many of these might be settled by em- pirical testing of seemingly conflicting hypotheses. Economists are in the unfor-