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• Using the IMF country reports for 1978-2019 and text analytics, we identify four narratives about growth economics. • With a vocabulary of more than 100 concepts, we find much lower occurrence of concepts from growth theory. • Major events such as economic crises and political leadership changes tend to affect the direction of growth narratives. • We propose a nexus of the pool of economic ideas, power structure, and trigger events to interpret the shift in 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial policy is tainted with bad reputation among policymakers and academics and is often viewed as the road to perdition for developing economies. Yet the success of the Asian Miracles with industrial policy stands as an uncomfortable story that many ignore or claim it cannot be replicated. We argue that one can learn from these miracles and we suggest that three key principles were behind their success: (i) the support of domestic producers in sophisticated industries, beyond the initial comparative advantage; (ii) export orientation; and (iii) the pursuit of fierce competition with strict accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]