Economics of Late Development and Industrialization: Putting Gebrehiwot Baykedagn (1886–1919) in Context

During the past few decades, developing countries have been pushed by international economic institutions and developed countries to effectively abandon promotion of industrialization and structural transformation as a key developmental agenda. In addition, the ‘development’ debate of recent decades has tended to focus solely on internal factors as if external economic forces are always benign. Within this context, this paper analyzes the key ideas of Gebrehiwot Baykedagn (GHB) (1886–1919), traces their lineages and considers their feasibility and relevance for current developing economies. In a nutshell, for GHB, the main keys to economic development are the creation, accumulation and use of knowledge and skill, technology, innovation and technical change and the means of economic development are deliberate, dynamic and comprehensive sets of state-directed, synergistic interventions that aim at moving an economy away from ‘nature-intensive’ economic activities towards knowledge-, skill-, technology- and innovation-based ones. Based on analysis of historical and theoretical evidence, this paper argues that the main ideas of GHB and his colleagues are still valid, feasible and relevant for today’s developing economies as long as they are innovatively tailored to the unique context of each country and to the broader international policy context.