Osaka City University
Discussion
Started 20 February 2024
Heterodox Development Economics
One of the intriguing topics in heterodox development economics has been emphasizing the role of mainstream economic theories in potentially misleading developing countries during the formulation of development policies. In this context, a significant point of contention arises: while mainstream economics primarily assesses a nation’s well-being (development level) based on its consumption, heterodox development economics shifts its focus to the productive power of a nation—a perspective rooted in classical political economy. According to this viewpoint, the curriculum for development economics in developing countries should prioritize the study of classical economists such as Smith, Ricardo, List, and Marx, rather than neoclassical theories. To what extent can this claim be accepted?
Popular replies (1)
It is true that classical economists such as Smith, Ricardo, List, and Marx tried to understand economic development in some aspects better than neoclassical economists including Jevons, Walras and others. However, there were always many economists who attempted challenging task of understanding economic development rather than simple growth. In such economists we can add, as Mark Knell mentioned, Schumpeter and more contemporary evolutional economists after Nelson and Winter.
Some growth theorists played an important function in understanding development. Robert Solow and Moses Abramovitz found that a major part of economic growth should be explained not by increase of inputs (especially capital formation) but technological change (the residual in Solow's term). New growth theory by Paul Romer and Robert Lucas did not developed Solow and Abramovitz's insight. They rather returned to the old view of growth that explains it by increase of inputs, this time by human capital instead of material capital. Their "success" has hidden the importance of technological change.
For developing countries standard macroeconomic policies are insufficient (This does not mean that good macroeconomic management is useless.)
A system of policies to enhance the technology level of society is necessary. For this purpose, the arguments like national system of innovations are full of hints. Historical experience of various countries (including late comers like Japan and other East Asian countries) is also valuable. Innovations emerge not only from high techs. Wide entrepreneurship education is indispensable.
Finally, the core theory of economic development must incorporate technological change in a true sense. One of such candidates is evolutionary growth theory. Unfortunately, it had a defect. It lacked a value theory (or a price theory) with which to treat technical choice. This lacuna was filled recently by my paper
(2020).
This became possible by virtue of a value theory in the post-Keynesian tradition equipped with quantity adjustment theory by Masashi Morioka .
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Call for papers (World Association for Political Economy and Pluripolarity Journal)
Call for Papers
Geopolitical Economy Stream
World Association for Political Economy (WAPE)
2-4 August 2020, Panteion University, Athens, Greece
Geopolitical Economy: globalization or imperialism? Development or war?
As conflicts and crises of every kind – from Ukraine and Gaza to the Korean Peninsula, from trade to technology – proliferate, few today doubt that the international order is undergoing seismic shifts and faces stark choices. In this context, inherited frameworks in the study of international relations – realism, liberalism, globalization, U.S. Hegemony – have neither anticipated nor explained these developments and the accelerating trend towards multipolarity or, as Hugo Chavez, referring to the diversity of economic forms in the more numerous poles of the world economy, called it, pluripolarity. The need for a new approach to understanding the international relations of our time is urgent.
Geopolitical economy is one such approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitical_economy). Rooted in the classical Marxist tradition, critical of many of its current avatars, putting the understanding of capitalism and its contradictions and of imperialism and anti-imperialism at its core, giving states their rightful due, alongside classes, as key actors shaping the modern capitalist world, drawing on classical political economy and other traditions critical of neoclassical economics, geopolitical economy aims to investigate the international relations of the capitalist world in a historical materialist manner.
At the 17th World Association for Political Economy conference in Athens, in keeping with its overall theme of ‘Political Economy versus Economics in a Turbulent Multipolar World’, we launch the Geopolitical Economy stream of WAPE with this call for papers.
We invite papers on the broad theme of ‘Geopolitical Economy: globalization or imperialism? Development or war?'. We especially encourage papers that engage with – both positively and critically – the existing geopolitical economy literature and develop its many themes on a variety of topics, including, but not limited to, the following:
• Understanding imperialism in an age of advancing pluripolarity
• The sources and resources of anti-imperialism
• Classical Marxist understandings of the international relations of capitalism
• The problems with existing paradigms, including ‘globalization’ and ‘U.S. Hegemony’
• The geopolitical economy of trade, investment, finance and technology
• War, Proxy Wars and Sanctions in our times
• The uses and misuses of international law
• The UN System, its history and contemporary problems
• New forms and organizations in international governance
• Shifting trade, investment, credit, migration and technology flows
Please send Abstracts to Pluripolarity@geopoliticaleconomy.org
•Deadline for abstract proposals: 29 April 2024
•Notice of acceptance: 20 May 2024
•Deadline for full paper: 1 July 2024
Contributions are not limited to those attending the WAPE conference in Athens; we encourage submissions from all interested scholars.
Selected papers may be published in Pluripolarity: Journal of Geopolitical Economy, a new journal being established by stream organisers, Radhika Desai (Radhika.Desai@umanitoba.ca and Efe Can Gürcan (e.gurcan@lse.ac.uk).
Related Publications
Rodan was one of the founders and first leaders of the field of development economics. His formative intellectual years were in the Austrian School of economics at the University of Vienna. He moved to the Department of Political Economy at University College, London, in 1931.
Rodan was one of the founders and first leaders of the field of development economics. His formative intellectual years were in the Austrian School of economics at the University of Vienna. He moved to the Department of Political Economy at University College London, in 1931.