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Patterns of Economic Growth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Bert F. Hoselitz
Bert F. Hoselitz*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

Much of the current discussion of theories of economic growth is coloured by one of two factors which repeatedly crop up in the pertinent literature. The theoretical treatment of economic growth is either too strongly policy-oriented, or it is stated in an overly general form whose results are applicable only with difficulty, and often with grave reservations, to actual cases of economic growth.

Since the practical needs of policy-makers in the United Nations and its specialized agencies and in national governments concerned with developmental policies or colonial development have provided a strong impetus for the recent study of economic growth it is not surprising that the literature on this subject should have taken on a strong policy-oriented coloration. What the practitioners needed and continue to need are general guide-lines for their work. What they ask from the theorist, therefore, is to prescribe for them a series of relatively simple formulas which make up the basic equipment of the tool-kits they can take to the four corners of the world and from which they can select, as the situation demands, the appropriate item for application. The result of this situation has been the elaboration of a large amount of knowledge, the parts of which are little integrated. This is especially unfortunate since the concept of technical assistance has tended to embrace knowledge in many fields of social science and has brought together scholars and administrators in various fields and with varied technical competence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , November 1955 , pp. 416 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1955

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Toronto, June 1, 1955. I wish to express my gratitude to Professors Richard Hartshorne and Joseph J. Spengler who read and discussed with me an earlier draft. I owe many fruitful suggestions to them. The blunders are all mine.

References

1 Schumpeter, Joseph, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York, 1955), 25.Google Scholar

2 Smith, Henry Nash, Virgin Land (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 123 ff.Google Scholar, passim.

3 For Italy and Flanders see Lestocquoy, Jean, Les Villes de Flandre et d'Italie sous le gouvernement des patriciens (Paris, 1952), passim Google Scholar; for the Hansa towns see Rörig, Fritz, Hansische Beiträge zur deutschen Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Breslau, 1928), esp. chaps, i-iii and viiGoogle Scholar; for upper Germany see Strieder, Jakob, Zur Genesis des modernen Kapitalismus (2nd ed., Berlin, 1935).Google Scholar

4 The episode reported in the paragraph has been analysed in greater detail by Kindleberger, Charles P. in “Group Behavior and International Trade,” Journal of Political Economy, L, no. 1, 02, 1951, 30–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Engels, Friedrich, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Chicago, 1902), 123.Google Scholar

6 See Bronfenbrenner, Martin, “The Appeal of Confiscation in Economic Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, III, no. 3, 04, 1955, 204–9.Google Scholar

7 See Kuznets, Simon, “Population, Income and Capital” in Dupriez, Leon H., ed., Economic Progress: Papers and Proceedings of a Round Table Held by the International Economic Association (Louvain, 1955), 43–5.Google Scholar

8 Grossman, Gregory, “National Income” in Bergson, Abram, ed., Soviet Economic Growth (Evanston, Ill., 1953), 8–10.Google Scholar

9 See Gerschenkron, Alexander, “Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective” in Hoselitz, Bert F., ed., The Progress of Underdeveloped Areas (Chicago, 1952), 10.Google Scholar

10 The points alluded to in this paragraph are discussed in greater length in my forthcoming essay, “Entrepreneurship and Capital Formation in France and Britain since 1700” in Abramovitz, Moses, ed., Capital Formation and Economic Growth, to be published by Princeton University Press, Princeton.Google Scholar

11 A good discussion along somewhat “traditional” lines of the economic decline of northern Italy is presented by Doren, Alfred, Italienische Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Jena, 1934), 675 ff.Google Scholar

12 The discussion in this and the subsequent two paragraphs owes much to the masterly study by Braudel, Fernand, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949), esp. 268 ff., 421 ff., and 549–50.Google Scholar

13 The points raised in this section are discussed in greater length in my forthcoming article, “Economic Development in Central America,” to be published in the June 1956 issue of Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv.