>G'day Brad,
>
>He of the universalist thesis of
>development, the facile 'stages of growth' prescription, the culturally
>arrogant 'you, too, can be like us' lie...
The work on nineteenth century Britain is quite good. So was a survey
of economic theories of long-run growth that he did... at the start
of the 1980s?
_Stages_ made everything out to be much too simple. But from today's
perspective, 40 years later, it looks very much as though southern
Europe immediately after WWII and East Asia starting in 1960
experienced something very much like a "take off."
Where Rostow went most wrong, I think, is in his naive and optimistic
belief that "take off" was irreversible--that once it had started,
you would grow rapidly essentially forever (and he was wrong: look at
Argentina, Uruguay, or Chile). Where Rostow went almost as badly
wrong, I think, is in his naive belief that pretty much the only
thing you need to achieve in order to reach "take off" is to raise
your national savings and investment rate: it's much harder than
that. And where Rostow went third most wrong, I think, is in his
failure to distinguish between processes of integration into the
world economy that aided development (encouraged investment and
transferred technology) from "enclave" integration that hobbled
development (encouraged elite consumption and corruption, and
transferred no technology).
But the stress on the virtuous circles that accelerate growth once it
is well underway, on the importance of export commodity
terms-of-trade in generating the long waves that accelerated or
retarded development, the focus on growth as structural change rather
than just more "output," and on the links between capital
accumulation and access to technology--all of these seem to be good
and powerful insights that we owe in part at least to Rostow.
Brad DeLong
