This study aims at putting much of the blame for persistent Third World underdevelopment on faulty prescriptions derived from Western mainstream (i.e. positive) economic theorizing itself. More specifically, the study is centered on the following three arguments: first, mainstream economics has produced flawed theories of economic development in the Third World. Second, these flawed theories imported from the West have lacked fit, resulting in distorted and biased Third World development. Third, for reasons to be analysed in this selection, in relation to Eurocentricity, Western theorists have stubbornly ignored the basic flaws in their theories, hiding these behind idealized constructions of perfect competition or rational (i.e. Western) behaviour.
