[latefordinner]

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This has led to the resurgence of a field called developmental economics which is more concerned with the efficacy of certain programs than any ideological basis.

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Well there's still plenty of ideological debates within development economics - even more so at times because some heterodox economic theories are taken more seriously there than in other branches of economics -- but I agree that there is a lot of work being done in terms of experimental designs that look at small-scale interventions and says look, does this work, or doesn't it - with some surprising results that have reverberations at both ends of the political spectrum.

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I agree with this - the shocks from immediately opening markets can sometimes be too great for people to bear, as shown by Russia and many third world countries.

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Especially when the developed countries continue to heavily subsidize certain industries. For example, telling a developing country that they have to accept US agricultural products and slash any forms of regulation basically drives people into slave-labor type conditions in export-processing zones to provide cheap labor for US multinationals and also usually results in the powerful elite getting extraordinarily wealthy very quickly. You can complain all you want about the amount of rent-seeking and corruption that is part of international aid - and it IS a large part, bribes here, bribes there, unaccounted for millions over there - but it's nothing compared the wholesale theft of capital that has occurred in places like Russia that basically converted overnight.