When it comes to the all-too-human problem of recessions and depressions, economists need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that eve… - Paul Krugman

The irony... is that high development theory was right. By this I do not mean that the Big Push is really the right story of how development takes place, or even that the issues raised in high development theory are necessarily the key ones for making poor countries rich. What I do mean is that the unconventional themes put forth by the high development theorists—their emphasis on strategic complementarity in investment decisions and on the problem of coordination failure—did... identify important possibilities that are neglected in models. But the high development theorists failed to convince their colleagues of the importance of those possibilities. Worse, they failed even to communicate clearly what they were talking about. And so good ideas, important ideas, were ignored for a generation...

As the example of Ronald Reagan shows, real political success comes not simply from appealing to the interests that people currently perceive but from finding ways to redefine their perceived interests, to harness their discontent in favor of changes that you can lead.

No, the problem that the politicians have with the professors is not one of failure to communicate; it is one of failure to say what politicians want (need) to hear, especially when they are trying to seize power from other politicians. And necessity is the mother of invention: a different group, the policy entrepreneurs, has arisen to fill the gap.