1. DISCUSSION.
- Author
-
Hirschman, Albert O.
- Subjects
ECONOMIC development ,DEVELOPING countries ,INDUSTRIALIZATION ,ECONOMIC conditions in Brazil ,EXPORTS ,INDIAN economy ,ECONOMIC conditions in Africa ,INTERNATIONAL trade ,ECONOMICS - Abstract
This article focuses on economic growth of developing countries. In discussing the growth and trade performance of three underdeveloped areas, the authors differ in mood, but not in conclusion. They all tell that no ways of identifying incremental as wholly distinct from established comparative advantage have as yet been discovered. In Brazil, industrialization based essentially on import substitution has been a big success, and if new export flows have failed to materialize, this is wholly the fault of protection in the older industrial countries. In India, where the impact of industrialization on the economy as a whole has been smaller than in Brazil, the failure to develop new exports cannot be dismissed quite so easily since India pioneered among underdeveloped countries in exporting manufactures and, in discussions of new patterns of international trade, her potential comparative advantage in steel, for example, had been frequently and hopefully pointed out. In Africa, finally, the road to economic development via import-substituting industrialization is less appealing than it had seemed elsewhere a decade or a generation ago, both because of intrinsic characteristics of most of the African economies and because one would like to do better than some countries that have run into trouble precisely by following that road.
- Published
- 1964