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Comparative Economic Progress A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Rondo E. Cameron
Rondo E. Cameron
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

The study of economic growth would seem to offer unusual opportunities for the application of the comparative method. The number of cases is large, from the Egypt of the Pharoahs to the Egypt of Nasser, from the civilizations of the Indus, of Babylon, and the Mayas to the latest development programs of Pakistan, Iraq, and Guatamala. The practical significance of increased understanding of the process of growth could be great indeed. And economic growth theorists, after plunging ahead in the eary postwar years with unlimited confidence in the tools of their trade, have more recently issued open invitations to historians, anthropologists, and other scholars who deal with whole societies to assist in the formulation of hypotheses explanatory of economic growth. Recent textbooks and surveys of the field now include as a matter of course a section devoted to “the lessons of history”. More specialized works frequently include a chapter on the historical background of their subjects or numerous historical or comparative analogies. As yet, however, the actual contributions of comparative history to an understanding of the process of economic development have been limited, not to say negligible. Historical events and episodes have been used to illustrate this or that theory of development, but historical experience en grand has not yet been used satisfactorily to generate a theory of its own; nor have economic historians, the scholars indicated by training and professional orientation to bridge the gap between economic theory and historical experience, shown any great enthusiasm for the task. A prize competition recently opened by the Council (formerly Committee) on Research in Economic History for studies in comparative economic history failed to attract a single suitable entry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , January 1961 , pp. 231 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1961

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References

1 See, e.g., Buchanan, Norman S. and Ellis, Howard S., Approaches to Economic Development (New York, 1955), Part IIGoogle Scholar: “Economic Development as Recorded History”; and Higgins, Benjamin, Economic Development: Principles, Problems, and Policies (New York, 1959), Part 3Google Scholar: “Principles: Lessons of History.”

2 Cf. Mason, Edward S., Economic Planning in Underdeveloped Areas: Government and Business (New York, 1958), Chapter TwoGoogle Scholar: “Government and Business in Nineteenth- Century Economic Development”. Among the many recent works on the theory and policy of economic development which make allusions to historical and comparative experiences one may mention with especial favor Bauer, Peter T. and Yamey, Basil S., The Economics of Under-developed Countries (Cambridge-Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar and Hirschman, Albert O., The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven, 1958)Google Scholar.

3 Arthur Lewis, W., The Theory of Economic Growth (Homewood, 111., 1955), p. 15Google Scholar.

4 Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, 1960), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

5 Rostow, op. cit.; Youngson, A. J., Possibilities of Economic Progress (Cambridge, 1959)Google Scholar.

6 Rostow, W. W., “The Take-off into Self-Sustained Growth”, Economic Journal, 66 (03, 1956), pp. 25–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Id., Stages, p. 36; cf. “Take-off”, p. 25.

8 Stages, p. 4.

9 New York, 1952.

10 For similar but more detailed criticism of the take-off concept as applied to American history see North, Douglass C., “A Note on Professor Rostow's ‘Take-off into Self- Sustained Economic Growth”, The Manchester School, 01 1958, pp. 68–75Google Scholar.

11 Ashton, T. S., An Economic History of England: The 18th Century (London, 1955), p. 125Google Scholar; Nef, John U., “The Industrial Revolution Reconsidered”, Journal of Economic History, III (1943), pp. 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Lindahl, Eric and others, The National Income of Sweden, 1861–1930 (Stockholm, 1937)Google Scholar; Kuznets, Simon, “International Differences in Capital Formation”, in Capital Formation and Economic Growth (Princeton, 1955)Google Scholar.