ABOUT Our goal is to promote writing and research by students from all around the world, to provide access for undergraduates to a resource normally reserved for professionals and graduate students in the field, to create a spirit of critical and original thinking and international dialogue, to establish a forum where a broad spectrum of opinions on economic development can be uttered, where ideas and views can be exchanged not only on what the inherently diverse concept of development is or what it should be, what it may and what it can involve, ranging from issues of poverty and inequality through institutions and market structures to individual behaviour and social choice, remembering possibilities as well as constraints but also to ensure that previously unheard voices are heard, to recognize those who argumentatively stand up for what they believe to be true, to create an environment in which atypical, nonconforming or uncommon views can coexist with the ‘standard’, ‘accepted’ convention, to provide a frame to integrate and embrace while allowing to differ and diverge, to comprise fresh as well as traditional outlooks, valuing contributions from all over the world regardless of their origin, to permit experimentation as well as discussion.   Because we live in a world that is not only growing and developing, but also polar and unequal, where the conditions of so few are immensely distant from the conditions of so many, in a world which on the one extreme is rapidly changing while at the same time profoundly inertial, where often swift economic shifts occur, while conventions and cultural norms are deep-rooted and ideas slow to change. Because it is the multitude of pixels that make up the overall picture, because we firmly believe that the array of thoughts and initiatives can make a difference, because we believe in the power of ideas. ‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.’  /John Maynard Keynes/