Crouching beliefs, hidden biases: The rise and fall of growth narratives

The debate among economists about an optimal growth recipe has been the subject of competing "narratives." We identify-four major growth narratives using the text analytics of IMF country reports over 1978-2019. The narrative "Economic Structure"-services, manufacturing, and agriculture-has been on a secular decline overshadowed by the "Structural Reforms"-competitiveness, transparency, and governance. We observe the rise and fall of the "Washington Consensus"-privatization and liberalization- and the rise to dominance of the "Washington Constellation," a collection of many disparate terms such as productivity, tourism, and inequality. We interpret these changes through the lens of a nexus of the changing pool of economic ideas, the power structure within organizations, and the shocks that trigger a shift of narratives and their translation into policies.(c) 2023 International Monetary fund. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.