Development Economics: What Have We Learned?

The wealth and poverty of nations and their peoples constitute the domain of development economics. The complexity of the problems it studies is thus immense, and the difficulties facing its practitioners, either the Suslovs or the aparatchiks, are heroic. I can think of no better way of underlining these difficulties than by recalling that few foresaw, at the turn of the century, the dramatic rise of modern Japan or, for that matter, at the end of World War II, the later emergence of the Far Eastern Four – the Republic of China, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea and Singapore – as the more impressive success stories in development. Those who enjoy Japanese literature as much as I do may be interested to know that Natsume Soseki, the great Japanese novelist, was reported to have wanted to become an architect instead when he entered college in 1884, but was advised that “there was no glory in being an architect in such a poor country as Japan, where there would never arise the opportunity of building a great monument of the order of St. Paul’s†!…