(2022-10-23) Shalizi Development Economics And Economic Growth

Cosma Shalizi on Development Economics and Economic Growth. By a "developed" economy, people roughly mean ones with a high, persistently-growing per-captia income which is not simply based on resource extraction (i.e., oil) or remittances or rentierism

While there are of course differences among them... they are all more similar to each other than they are to the vast variety of "undeveloped",

Economies in the first category tend to stay there; so, sadly, do countries in the second.

Development economics is the sub-discipline of economics which attempts to study how economies which have not attained this happy condition can be made to do so, and the factors which hold others back.

Most of what's securely known on the subject is what doesn't work. Imperialism doesn't. Communism — the nationalization of the means of production under the control of a party-state, with comprehensive planning — doesn't, or at least doesn't get you all the way.

Import substitution doesn't work either. A robust market system seems essential, but "let the market take care of it" doesn't work. Etc. Institutions matter somehow, but nobody's quite sure how...