Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 08:59:21 -0700 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com From: Brad DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: whither dependency theory?
>A quick question: where does dependency theory stand today? Has it pretty
>much been thrown out the window? Are there new and better theories which
>incorporate its main thesis of underdevelopment? And more specifically: how
>does Baran's "Political Economy of Growth" hold up?
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Chris
Well, in the post-WWII era those countries that developed the fastest were those that integrated into the world economy as fast and as fully as possible, while still maintaining tariffs that put downward pressure on luxury imports, and perhaps tariffs that maintained space for developing industries in areas of emerging comparative advantage (textiles, assembly, basic metals, consumer electronics, et cetera). Those countries that did the worst were those that tried to reduce the share of trade in GDP and build up a mirror image of a first-world industrial base from scratch. (All this, however, leaves to one side the governance and corruption issues that are perhaps the most crucial.)
So I think the judgement has to be that dependency theory was hopelessly naive, and that the "development of underdevelopment" is a much more complicated phenomenon than the dependentistas realized...
Brad DeLong