Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables, Figures and Boxes
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Framework of Analysis
- 2 Context and Conditions of International Competition
- 3 Alternative Theories of Competitiveness
- 4 Firm Strategy and New Industrial Organization
- 5 External Economies: Organization of Interfirm Relations
- 6 Reputation and Trust: A Firm's Relations with Stakeholders and Others
- 7 Innovation and Upgrading
- 8 Government Policies
- 9 The Experiences of China and Mexico
- 10 Summary and Concluding Remarks
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables, Figures and Boxes
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Framework of Analysis
- 2 Context and Conditions of International Competition
- 3 Alternative Theories of Competitiveness
- 4 Firm Strategy and New Industrial Organization
- 5 External Economies: Organization of Interfirm Relations
- 6 Reputation and Trust: A Firm's Relations with Stakeholders and Others
- 7 Innovation and Upgrading
- 8 Government Policies
- 9 The Experiences of China and Mexico
- 10 Summary and Concluding Remarks
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the context of the financial crises and the crises of falling real wages in Europe and the United States, the zeitgeist of the West is in transition. In this context Mehdi Shafaeddin has written a very timely book, presenting for us the type of economic ideas that once made the West wealthy and which now need to be resurrected.
This book is part of a growing neodevelopmentalist tradition. Macro- and microlevel analyses are combined into a useful meso-level discourse, producing a level of abstraction where useful policy recommendations can be developed. Shafaeddin resurrects the eighteenth-century German and US concept of ‘productive power’, a power that – in the tradition of Friedrich List – is assumed to emanate from new knowledge, i.e., from mental rather than physical capital. In this book, economic development is created by dynamic imperfect competition of the Schumpeterian kind, not in a setting of perfect competition. Rather than a world of perfect information, this book sees the world far more realistically as one where barriers to entry abound. The static and unrealistic setting of mainstream economics is substituted by a dynamic one and, in the tradition of Edith Penrose, firms are seen as being unique. Economic development becomes a process of dynamic rent seeking by firms on behalf of nations, and the higher real wages at the core of economic development result from this dynamic process. Unceasing upgrading of technological skills and of economic activities – which are qualitatively different – is the name of the game in economic development.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Competitiveness and DevelopmentMyth and Realities, pp. xiii - xviPublisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012