Nazrul Islam (International Center for the Study of East Asian Development (ICSEAD), Kitakyushu, Japan)
Abstract
This paper examines Sachs and Woo’s (1997, 2000) hypothesis on the basis of Viet Nam’s experience with her 1989 reforms that China would have grown faster had she followed the Big Bang approach to reform instead of the Gradual approach. The paper scrutinizes this hypothesis from the viewpoint of accuracy of facts, appropriateness of the characterization, and acceptability of the hypothesis. The paper finds that Sachs and Woo fall short of meeting these criteria. The paper then examines the possible reasons for Sachs and Woo pitfalls and shows that the source of these pitfalls lies in their subjective preference for the Big Bang approach to reform.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Laboratory for Macroeconomic Analysis in its series Working Papers with number
WP13_2007_06.