Can frontier-based development be successful? The short answer to this question is “why not?” As we have discussed, since 1500 “frontier expansion” has been a major part of global economic development. Such frontier-based economic development is characterized by a pattern of capital investment, technological innovation and social and economic institutions dependent on “opening up” new frontiers of natural resources once existing ones have been “closed” and exhausted. Most of this development has been incredibly successful, particularly during the Golden Age of Resource-Based Development (1870–1913). So why shouldn't present-day developing economies dependent on frontier-based development also be able to attain such success?

One reason is that the current process of frontier-based development in low and middle-income economies is fundamentally different from the exploitation of the “Great Frontier” in previous eras, including the Golden Age. Frontier expansion in today's developing countries is not facilitating take off into sustained and balanced growth; rather, it is symptomatic of a “dualism within dualism” economic structure that is perpetuating underdevelopment. This “dualism within dualism” structure reinforces the dependence of the overall economy on mainly primary product exports, the concentration of a large proportion of the population on fragile land, and a high incidence of rural poverty.

There is clearly a “vicious cycle” at work here: in many of today's developing economies, any resource rents that are generated and appropriated from frontier “reserves” are simply leading to further frontier land expansion and resource exploitation. The result is very little economy-wide efficiency gains and benefits.