Some Issues of Economic Development and of Development Economics

Abstract

Economic development and growth have become the very center of inquiry for economists today, almost to the point of tediousness. When economics began in the eighteenth century, it had much the same emphasis as today, for many of the same reasons. There are, of course, many string differences to be found between the thoughts of earlier and contemporary economistsbetween, say, the Physiocrats, Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, J. S. Mill and Marx on the one hand, and Nurkse, Kuznets, W. A. Lewis, Hirschman, W. W. Rostow, Chenery and Rosenstein-Rodan on the other. Those differences may be explained by the fact that both economics and the world have changed much since the eighteenth century. It must be said, however, that economics has not changed as much as the world; or, more usefully, economics has changed in ways sadly out of touch with the world's needs. Indeed, it seems to many that economists of the earlier period spoke with more wisdom on the problems of their day than do our colleagues today. Does that seem so because the problems of economic development then were simpler than those of today? Perhaps. However, it is more likely that the technical and political audiences of the past expected and required less than today's. Smith and Ricardo, for example, spoke to quite narrow audiences, and principally about the need to do away with what were-and appeared to their audiences to be-obvious obstacles to the further growth of their economies. For Smith there was a long list of governmental interferences with economic activity, and he simply recommended that they be abolished. For Ricardo, the problem was narrower still, and his analysis could thus seem more sophisticated in our eyes: The British economy of his day, already changing for the better in Smithian terms, had as its principal obstacle to further progress a system of taxation, especially on imported foodstuffs, that benefited those least likely to further the modernizaion of the economy (landlords) and impeded those whose activities were in the vanguard of the industrialization process. Whatever else he proposed, it was implicit (and occasionally explicit) in Ricardo's treatment that a new structure of economic power and privilege was required for continuing economic development. Setting aside Marx for the moment, the earlier economists had as their