Erik Reinert (2007), 'How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor'

The new book of my supervisor, Erik S. Reinert, is now available at (online) bookstores: How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor (London: Constable, 2007). I am reproducing the details of the book below.

It is fascinating how this book has sparked both intense and intensive debates in economics, business, and the social sciences already, given that it was only published late April. Find out for yourself why Erik's book has elicited interesting debates as soon as it was published from mainstream economists to heterodox economists to socialists to journalists to bloggers. (Here for Erik's reply to recent debates on his book.)

Do get one for you and for your institutes/organisations/networks/schools/libraries!

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HOW RICH COUNTRIES GOT RICH ... AND WHY POOR COUNTRIES STAY POOR
by Erik S. Reinert

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AUTHOR

Erik S. Reinert is editor of Globalization, Economic Development and Inequality: An Alternative Perspective (2004) and co-editor of The Origins of Development Economics: How Schools of Economic Thought Have Addressed Development (2005). He is Professor of Technology Governance and Development Strategies at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, and president of The Other Canon foundation in Norway. He is one of the world’s leading heterodox development economists.

For further information see www.othercanon.org.

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SYNOPSIS

From Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East, the development of the world’s wealthy nations has been driven by a combination of government intervention, initial protectionism, and the strategically timed introduction of free trade and investments. So says Erik Reinert, a leading economist who does not subscribe to the orthodoxy. Yet despite its demonstrable success, when it comes to development in the poorer nations, Western powers have largely ignored this approach and have taken the toughest of hard lines on the importance of free trade.

Reinert sets out his revisionist history of economics and shows how the discipline has long been torn between the continental Renaissance tradition on one hand and the free market theories of English and later American economics on the other. He argues that our economies were founded on protectionism and state activism and it was long before they could afford the luxury of free trade. When our leaders come to lecture poor countries on the right road to riches they do so in almost perfect ignorance of the real history of mass affluence.

One country’s medicine could be another country’s poison. A book aimed at a politically aware and progressively minded readership, How Rich Countries Got Rich . . . will bury economic orthodoxy once and for all and open up the debate on why free trade is not the best answer for our hopes of worldwide prosperity.

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Jomo K.S., UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development and Founder Chair of International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs)

Introduction

1 Discovering Types of Economic Theories
2 The Evolution of the Two Different Approaches
3 Emulation: How Rich Countries Got Rich
4 Globalization: the Arguments in Favour are also the Arguments Against
5 Globalization and Primitivization: How the Poor Get Even Poorer
6 Explaining Away Failure: Red Herrings at the End of History
7 Palliative Economics: Why the Millenium Goals are a Bad Idea
8 'Get the economic activities right', or, the Lost Art of Creating Middle-Income Countries

Appendices

I David Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage in International Trade
II Two Different Ways of Understanding the Economic World and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations
III Frank Graham's Theory of Uneven Development
IV Two Ideal Types of Protectionism Compared
V Philipp von Hönigk's Nine Points on How to Emulate the Rich Countries (1684)
VI The Quality Index of Economic Activities

Notes
Bibliography
Index

(365 pages)

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PRAISES

'Reinert forces you to think. He reaches deep into economic history and the history of economics - the history of theory, practice and policy - creatively synthesizing an evolutionary, institutionalist, new 'canon', putting technological progress and production experience - 'learning by doing' - at the centre of economic development. '

- Jose Antonio Ocampo, UN Undersecretary General for Economic and Social Affairs

'Warning: this book will forever change your conception of economic development.'
- Professor Carlota Perez, Tallinn University of Technology and Cambridge University

'Disinters those awkward truths the free trade theorists wanted dead and buried. Reinert's brilliant forensics rebuild a convincing economic blueprint for tackling world poverty.'
- Alex MacGillvray, author of A Brief History of Globalization

'Erik Reinert's book represents a breakthrough in our understanding of the links between technology and the wealth and poverty of nations.'
- Christopher Freeman, Professor Emeritus, SPRU, University of Sussex

'A fascinating overview of how contemporary economics came to follow its historic path, and of a different route it might have, and may still yet, pursue.'
- Robert Heilbroner, on Reinert's 'The Role of the State in Economic Growth'