Professor Stiglitz, Nobel prize winner and ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank fired first – and Rogoff, chief economist at the IMF, replied. Delightful stuff, and maybe your clubbish debate will improve living conditions in our part of the world. But we get ahead of our story.

Time to introduce ourselves. We are economists from poor countries. We have worshipped you for decades; more accurately, your work. We have read all your papers, worked on the models you have developed, and never missed a lecture by academics of your stature. Unfortunately, it is too long a distance for you to traverse to come to us and our universities are too low a quality to attract you here.

We admire your kindness. You devote your precious time to our problems, even get malaria visiting our countries. You have the best advice for us. Unfortunately, we do not implement it right and you have to end up fighting each other.

We all know that your genius only needs some macro data from us, which the IMF-World Bank dutifully gathers. Like astrologers, you can glean all the solutions for our problems from this distant data and send us advice through the multilateral missions. What fools we are that we cannot benefit from that. Fifty years of good advice from giants and we have not moved an inch forward. Perhaps even regressed. And those that have moved forward have not necessarily done so because of your guru advice. 

For fifty years, giants like you have advised us through primarily the Washington Beltway Institutions, the World Bank and the IMF (WBI). We may not have come a long way, but we have traveled a lot. Do import substitution, try central planning; sorry, it's export promotion, so sorry, but there are stages of growth so build textile mills, so so sorry but agriculture needs emphasis; our apologies, but aren't you forgetting basic needs?

And while you are at it why not accumulate foreign exchange? But most important, do not forget literacy. We took your advice(s), slavishly watched those literacy numbers, and watched our universities become centers of decadence and all manner of professional thinking, and policy development disappear from our world. We now have a large government, and pursued all manner of planning objectives - and central planned all sectors. Bad governance, you said.

Throughout this period there was limited or no attention paid to financial markets. Your colleagues and disciples forced a uniform recipe from Maldives to Argentina: all must build a central bank, institute capital controls and distort the financial market to generate "savings" for "development". Byte by byte, as the data went to astrologers in your universities, we experienced, and you learnt, that this was not an optimal policy. So we had to go through painful devaluations. Then we were told to remove financial repression through excessively high interests rates. Then we were encouraged to remove capital controls.

But after the East Asian crisis, the message changed - keep capital controls, perhaps even strengthen them. Hungry and distorted governments loved this message. If capital controls were removed, what would WBI and domestic governments do for a living? Free capital flows are the most efficient form of discipline for bad (and good) governments; at a whim, they can enter and leave, thus ensuring governance on a global scale.

Lip service to "institutional development?"

WBI now has a new mantra for development - build institutions. As all your suggestions, you mean well; you always do, which is why, despite many failed recommendations, we always find you endearing. But have you ever really seen the institutional decline in countries with ostensibly great "institutions", like India? Would you have time to listen to some of us? Can our real-life experience, and intimate knowledge, help you with your analysis? Or is it that like lab animals we have nothing to say? The data will tell you all and we wait for your next paper. Or you wait for our next crisis.

Rogoff says that the IMF has taken the lesson of institutional decline on board. Then why is it that the central banks continue to remain anything but monetary-policymaking institutions in poor countries? Why is it that they hardly have any monetary economists in them? How many have you visited? What interest does your research department take in them? Whose research do you read, other than western economists belonging to your club?

And Professor Stiglitz- your penchant for more and more government intervention is somewhat out of touch with the ground realities of the poor countries. Here government is controlling to the point of destroying markets and economies. We live with an absence of markets and see the need for them. Yes, we will be faced with market excesses but that is a luxury we are literally dying to have.

Hayek has been proven right, after all these many lonely years. A good legal system is a foundation of an economy. Yet nowhere has the reform on any legal system been completed. Yes your staff gets missions and reports but institutional development in the country remains stunted.  

What about institutional development at home?

More importantly, dear professors, we do not see the incentive structure in your own institutions to support your own objectives. You are great theorists in institutional development and incentive structures. Yet your institutions have no performance based reward systems. Nor do you have debate and innovation. Just ask those who suggested that aid had not worked; the World Bank dismissed Easterly as an ill wind.

Allow the poor country economists into the debate

The current development thinking arrangements do not give people like us a place on the table where ideas are discussed. The WBIs have a monopoly not only on policy development but also on funding of development research. Look at the conferences you arrange. The representation of the poor countries is very limited and often it is the usual suspects. Look at the consultants: all from American and now European academia.

Even large projects that influence development thinking and policy, e.g. the World Development Report and the World Economic Outlook, are all Washington based. Why can we not decentralize the development research and conference efforts? Why can some of these funds and their administration not be given to poor country universities and institutions? Then, by definition, there will be institution building, and the voices of the poor will be heard. Imagine if one year the Korean Development institute or Hernan De Sotos's institute produced the WDR! Not only would we have fresh concerns, fresh experiences but also contribute to institutional development that we all want! Maybe you too will get fresh ideas for your research.

Of course there is no reason for you to listen to what we suggest. Since economics is the only discipline where two people with conflicting views can both win a Nobel, maybe after many crises (which we will suffer), one of you will discover an idea and win the coveted price for discovery. Until then, grateful thanks from silent and unheard poor country economists for making our lives livelier with your debate if not better with your advice!