O problema é que custa 160 dólares (mais frete), e acho francamente exagerado.
Tenho de esperar para ler em alguma biblioteca universitária dos EUA, ou esperar mais ainda para ver se o preço baixa no Abebooks ou outros sites, mas esse tipo de livro dificilmente baixará de 140 dólares...
Uma alma caridosa...
Mas vou sugerir que a biblioteca do Itamaraty compre...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
WorldEconomicPerformanceAngusMaddison
Published by EH.Net (January 2014)
D.S. Prasada Rao and Bart van Ark, editors, World
Economic Performance: Past, Present and Future. Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar, 2013. ix + 432 pp. $160 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-84844-848-3.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Leandro Prados de la Escosura,
Department of Social Sciences, Universidad Carlos III.
This volume commemorates the late Angus
Maddison’s distinguished academic life and provides an idea of his wide range
of intellectual interests and drive. As time goes by it becomes evident how
Maddison’s approach changed the way economic historians address long-run
growth. As late as the early 1980s, the study of industrialization (economic
growth was not a fashionable term yet) mainly focused on sector analysis in
which agricultural transformation played a major role while services were
largely neglected. Maddison’s Phases of Capitalist Development (1982)
led economic historians to investigate past experiences of growth with the
tools used to analyze contemporary societies. As this approach required
macroeconomic data, Maddison persuaded colleagues across the world to undertake
the construction of historical national accounts. At the same time, in
Groningen, he led a team researching international GDP comparisons. On this
basis Maddison produced his widel! y used historical statistics of
purchasing-power-adjusted GDP per head and stimulated scholars to pursue
similar avenues of research as evidenced by the Maddison Project.
In World Economic Performance a
group of Maddison’s friends and students contribute ten papers initially
presented at conferences held to celebrate his eightieth birthday. An
unpublished piece by Maddison himself on Chinese long-run performance, a
two-part intellectual autobiography, an obituary, and an introduction complete
this lengthy volume.
In a Maddisonian fashion, the
volume encompasses the experiences of developed and developing countries. Thus,
the BRIICs, that is, Brazil (as a part of Latin America), Russia, India,
Indonesia, and China, along with OECD countries – the U.S., Western Europe, and
Japan – are examined. Maddison’s augmented production function including
proximate and ultimate causes of growth presides over the volume’s
contributions that, nonetheless, focus on the post-1950 era and include a
prognosis of their performance up to 2030.
In the case of the BRIICs, two phases are
distinguished in their performance since 1950: an initial phase of government
intervention and regulation with sluggish growth, and a later phase of
liberalization and accelerated growth. Growth accounting shows that while
factor accumulation prevailed in dirigiste and socialist experiments, capital
deepening and efficiency improvements drove growth thereafter. Maddison and
Justin Yifu Lin address poor performance and falling behind under Maoism in
China (1948-1978) and accelerated growth after economic reforms were
introduced. Lin associates China’s success in its on-going transition to a
market economy to gradual reforms, in contrast with Russia’s “big bang” of
privatization. He does not envisage, however, whether such a transition would
have been feasible in a more democratic context, as it was the case of Gaidar’s
Russia. In Maddison’s account, a much lower level of development, openness for
international trade and! capital, and the survival of the socialist state
largely explain China’s success. Stanislav Menshikov adds an important
dimension, the transformation of Russia from a heavy industry economy into a
petrochemicals and metals exporter with dramatic consequences on income
distribution. Deepak Lal’s contribution on India completes the picture with an
assessment of Fabian socialist policies that led to an inward-looking
industrialization strategy and of the gradual transition to market-friendly
policies initiated in the 1990s in which agriculture and, especially, services
made a significant contribution – while opening up is still incomplete. These
four chapters provide a fascinating reflection on the implications of
inward-looking policies for long run development and serve as a cautionary tale
for those nostalgic for industrial policies and “state-led industrialization.”
As regards the developed world, the role of ICT
in broad capital accumulation and multifactor productivity (MFP) is singled out
as the crucial differential in long-run performance between the U.S. (Robert
Gordon) and Western Europe (van Ark, Mary O’Mahony, and Marcel Timmer), that
becomes especially germane in the case of services. Kyoji Fukao and Osamu Saito
stress how exhausting catching up and declining working-age population signaled
the end of Japan’s accelerated growth.
What will the future bring to emergent
economies? Simple arithmetic projections based on factor endowments (human and
physical capital per worker) and the technological gap suggest that differences
in per capita income with the West will be reduced by 2030. However, the
exhaustion of catching-up as a potential factor of deceleration in the BRIICs
is only superficially addressed. The Japanese experience provides a warning to
forecasters. A glance to the convergence literature of the 1980s shows
how misguided the predictions of Japan’s catching up to the U.S. were.
Institutional obstacles that condition incentives to innovation are also
largely neglected. How will China’s performance be affected by hard-to-avoid
political reforms? Surprisingly, little attention is paid to geopolitical and
strategic issues that may hamper the optimistic picture drawn by most
contributors, with Ross Garnaut’s exception. The fact that economists have been
unable to predict major develo! pments over the last century challenges any
prediction made on the basis of simple forward projections. China’s rivalry
with India or Japan, the race to control natural resources – as opposed to its
provision through international trade – and the consequences of global warming
are threats to the linear progression of events that should be taken into
account.
Gloomy predictions are made, in turn, for
Western Europe and Japan. Improving efficiency in services appears to be a
crucial but far from easy prerequisite for resuming fast growth and catching up
to the U.S., since the small size of manufacturing precludes a significant
catching up from increasing its MFP.
Although we should be grateful to the editors
for gathering such a distinguish group of scholars, I would have liked them to
go the extra mile and persuade contributors to homogenize their approach to
growth accounting. Pierre van der Eng points out how crucial it is to have
rigorous and homogeneous measures of factor inputs to derive comparable
results. The reader would have also appreciated it if the findings from
different case studies had been compared in the Introduction. Moreover, there
is substantial room for improvement in the volume’s editing.
All in all, this extensive volume reads well, is
thought provoking, and will stimulate further research. Angus would be
certainly proud. I can only recommend you to rush to your library and get a
copy before someone else does. You will not regret it!
Leandro Prados de la Escosura (leandro.prados.delaescosura@uc3m.es)
is Professor of Economic History at Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, and CEPR
Research Fellow. During the academic year 2013-2014 he is Leverhulme Visiting
Professor at the LSE where he is researching economic freedom and wellbeing in
the long run.
Copyright (c) 2014 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author
and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net Administrator (administrator@eh.net).
Published by EH.Net
(January 2014). All EH.Net
reviews are archived athttp://www.eh.net/BookReview
