Books on the topic 'Neoclassical growth theory'

This chapter reviews currents in theory with a focus on modernization and neoclassical statements of comparative advantage on the one hand, and structuralism, dependency, and other theories of underdevelopment on the other. The latter theories of underdevelopment hit their zenith in the policies of the import-substitution industrialization of the 1960s and 1970s. They were largely dismissed in the 1980s as the limits of import-substitution industrialization became apparent and as East Asia industrialized, undermining any argument that structural transformation was problematic in the periphery. This chapter theorizes that neither orthodox nor heterodox theories of structural transformation adequately explain the development of late developers because of the heterogeneity of contemporary capitalism. That said, heterodox theories, which coalesce around the nature of incorporation of developing countries into the global economy, do retain conceptual usefulness in their focal point, ‘developmentalism’, by which we mean the deliberate attempts at national development led by the state.

The fundamental distinction is made between the real economy and the financial. The financial economy came into existence to serve the real economy, but led by false neoclassical microeconomic theory, it has become predatory on the real economy. Rather than seeking to correct the false theorising, this book sets it aside in its entirety, focusing instead on practical realities. A Deming based systems analysis is provided of organisational systems, their individual components and their interactions with the social and ecological macro systems within which they operate. Those organisational systems serve the real economy which is recognised as having three distinct layers, each requiring a very different approach for their effective service. The social-infrastructural layer is a mandatory state responsibility, rather than being voluntary and competitive. The progressive-competitive layer, served largely by private for-profit organisations, depends on its competitive characteristics being protected and energised. The technological-revolutionary layer is best served by a collaborative involvement of both private and public organisational systems developing and applying new technologies to generate economic progression including the necessary sustainability revolution. Required actions are identified for that remaking of the real economy and escaping destruction by organised money. Appropriate measures of progression are proposed to replace the current orthodox measures such as GDP and its growth. Practitioner Notes provide examples of the practical realities of organisational systems in both the real and financial economies, demonstrating the inadequacy and falseness of neoclassical modelling and the destructiveness of its prime beneficiaries, organised money.

This chapter evaluates new institutional economic theory and its approach to explaining economic transformation and political order. It explains the key assumptions of the ‘old’ New Institutional Economics, associated with the work of Douglass North prior to 2009. It then sets out the more recent developments within New Institutional Economics that engages more explicitly with power, in the work of Acemoglu, Robinson and North et al. The chapter evaluates the extent to which these theories can help explain Tanzania and Vietnam’s experiences of political reform and economic change over the era of high growth. The chapter argues that while the ‘new’-New Institutional Economics of development correctly identifies the importance of power in explaining economic transformation, these theories remained tied to a number of restrictive neoclassical assumptions that limits the extent to which they can illuminate processes of contemporary economic change.

These lectures in macroeconomics explain the theory and policy implications of macroeconomics in a systematic and logically consistent way. Central to this analysis is the principle of aggregate demand as formulated by the Polish economist Michał Kalecki, who is best known as the originator, along with Keynes, of the Keynesian Revolution in macroeconomics. The lectures cover the main components of aggregate demand, showing the key importance of firms’ investment for total output, employment, and economic growth in both closed and open economies. The main influences on investment are explained and how, through the circular flow of income and expenditure, investment generates profits in the economy. However, investment is unstable and the government therefore has a central role in stabilizing such an economy at high rates of employment. Along with investment, the labor market and wages then determine the distribution of income. This leads on to an examination of the role of money and finance in the contemporary capitalist economy. The analysis is illustrated with statistics and a survey of the evolution of capitalist economies since World War II, along with critical observations on the neoclassical approach to economics.

This book offers a political economy explanation for the striking cross-national differences in strategies and performance among East Asia’s automotive industries. Some countries—China, South Korea, and Taiwan—have successfully pursued “intensive” growth strategies by increasing local value added based on domestic inputs and technological competencies. Malaysia has attempted but failed to pursue this path. In contrast, Thailand has become a champion of “extensive” growth, relying on foreign assemblers and their suppliers to achieve an impressive expansion of production, assembly, and exports. Latecomer Indonesia has followed Thailand with some success, whereas the Philippines has remained an automotive backwater. Through cross-case and within-case analyses of the seven countries, the book argues that variation is a function of the institutional and political contexts in which firms operate. Different strategies require different institutions and institutional capacities. Intensive development is especially institutionally demanding. Effective institutions emerge when political leaders face severe claims on resources (security threats and domestic pressures for welfare improvement) in the absence of easily accessible revenues to satisfy such needs. Brief comparisons with Brazil, Mexico, and other developing countries confirm the utility of the analytic framework. This explanation is superior to neoclassical accounts. It is consistent with but provides more insight than other prominent approaches to development: national innovation systems, global value chains, and developmental states. New challenges facing auto assemblers and suppliers, such as the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles, will call heavily upon the institutional capacities highlighted in this book.

Defending Frenemies examines the nonproliferation strategies that the United States pursued toward vulnerable and often obstreperous allies in three volatile regions of the globe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. It presents a historical and comparative analysis of how successive US presidential administrations (those of John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush) employed inducements and coercive diplomacy toward Israel, Pakistan, South Korea, and Taiwan over nuclear proliferation. Building upon neoclassical realism, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro argues that regional power dynamics and US domestic politics shaped the types of nonproliferation strategies pursued. The overriding goals of successive administrations were to contain the growth of the Soviet Union’s influence in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as to enlist China as an ally of convenience against the Soviets in East Asia. Weaker allies’ nuclear proliferation could facilitate or complicate the realization of those goals. When policymakers perceived an unfavorable regional power distribution and short-time horizons for emerging threats to US interests, they were inclined to pursue accommodative strategies toward an ally. Conversely, when they perceived a favorable regional power distribution and longer time horizons for threats, they were inclined to pursue coercive nonproliferation strategies toward an ally. However, congressional opposition to certain arms transfers and to nonproliferation legislation sometimes led administrations to pursue hybrid strategies—combining coercive and accommodating elements—toward nuclear proliferating allies.

Heterodox work in Global Political Economy (GPE) finds its motive force in challenging the ontological atomism of International Political Economy (IPE) orthodoxy. Various strains of heterodoxy that have grown out of dependency theory and World-Systems Theory (WST), for example, emphasize the social whole: Individual parts are given form and meaning within social relations of domination produced by a history of violence and colonial conquest. An atomistic approach, they stress, seems designed to ignore this history of violence and relations of domination by making bargaining among independent units the key to explaining the current state of international institutions. For IPE, it is precisely this atomistic approach, largely inspired by the ostensible success of neoclassical economics, which justifies its claims to scientific rigor. International relations can be modeled as a market-like space, in which individual actors, with given preferences and endowments, bargain over the character of international institutional arrangements. Heterodox scholars’ treatment of social processes as indivisible wholes places them beyond the pale of acceptable scientific practice. Heterodoxy appears, then, as the constitutive outside of IPE orthodoxy.Heterodox GPE perhaps reached its zenith in the 1980s. Just as heterodox work was being cast out from the temple of International Relations (IR), heterodox scholars, building on earlier work, produced magisterial studies that continue to merit our attention. We focus on three texts: K. N. Chaudhuri’s Asia Before Europe (1990), Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History (1982), and L. S. Stavrianos’s Global Rift (1981). We select these texts for their temporal and geographical sweep and their intellectual acuity. While Chaudhuri limits his scope to the Indian Ocean over a millennium, Wolf and Stavrianos attempt an anthropology and a history, respectively, of European expansion, colonialism, and the rise of capitalism in the modern era. Though the authors combine different elements of material, political, and social life, all three illustrate the power of seeing the “social process” as an “indivisible whole,” as Schumpeter discusses in the epigram below. “Economic facts,” the region, or time period they extract for detailed scrutiny are never disconnected from the “great stream” or process of social relations. More specifically, Chaudhuri’s work shows notably that we cannot take for granted the distinct units that comprise a social whole, as does the IPE orthodoxy. Rather, such units must be carefully assembled by the scholar from historical evidence, just as the institutions, practices, and material infrastructure that comprise the unit were and are constructed by people over the longue durée. Wolf starts with a world of interaction, but shows that European expansion and the rise and spread of capitalism intensified cultural encounters, encompassing them all within a global division of labor that conditioned the developmental prospects of each in relation to the others. Stavrianos carries out a systematic and relational history of the First and Third Worlds, in which both appear as structural positions conditioned by a capitalist political economy. By way of conclusion, we suggest that these three works collectively inspire an effort to overcome the reification and dualism of agents and structures that inform IR theory and arrive instead at “flow.”