GCE French Unit 1 Specimen Question Paper

Qeh

Description

• leçon - matière potentielle : 35 marks
• expression écrite - matière potentielle : section b
• expression écrite

French Version 1.1 AS exams 2009 onwards A2 exams 2010 onwards GCE AS and A Level Unit 1: Specimen question paper

• operational exams
• nuisibles qu’on utilise
• faut faire attention parce
• exams 2009 onwards a2
• reasonable idea of the general shape

Sujets

• Section B
• Number
• Général
• Onward
• Operational definition

Informations

• Publié par: kepap
• Nombre de lectures: 55
• Langue: English

Extrait

Anglo-Saxon Structuralism vs. Latin American Structuralism in Development
Economics

1
Diego Sanchez-Ancochea
University of Oxford
[e-mail]

A more recent version of this document was published in E. Pérez, E. and M.
Vernengo (ed.) Ideas, Policies and Economic Development in the Americas, New
York, Routledge, 2007, pages 208-227

1. INTRODUCTION
The conviction that developing countries are structurally different to developed ones and
that specific theories and policy recommendations are required to address their problems
dominated the discipline since its birth in the 1940s to the 1970s. The neoclassical
counterrevolution of the early 1980s dramatically changed this vision and completely
reshaped the boundaries of the discipline. Neoclassical development economists
concentrated on issues of macroeconomic adjustment and static allocation of resources,
and recuperated the idea that a sole common theory could be used for both developed and
2developing countries. In the last few years, however, the lack of success of standard
neoclassical economics in explaining underdevelopment and promoting growth has
shown the need to recuperate the work of the “pioneers of development” (e.g. Lewis,
Hirschman, Rosenstein-Rodan, Nurkse, Myrdal) and readapt it to the current state of the
3world.

1
I thank Matias Vernengo and other participants at the Conference on Latin American and Caribbean
Economic Thought in the Eastern Economic Association Annual Conference, New York, march 2005 for
their valuable comments in an earlier daft.
2
It is true that in the 80s there was also a revival of interest in growth theory, partly caused by the lack of
convergence in per capita income between developed and developing countries (Romer, 1994). New
growth theory, however, concentrates primarily on developed countries and does not study structural
change.
3 This need is even recognized by mainstream economists working in the neoclassical tradition. For a
textbook example see Ray, D. (1998). Anglo-Saxon structuralism vs. Latin American structuralism 2
Early development economists followed a structuralist approach, concentrating on
the study of long-term structural change and on the identification of bottlenecks and
4
rigidities that were characteristic of developing countries. They all shared similar doubts
about the efficiency of the price mechanism and a conviction that government
intervention and planning was necessary to achieve development (Arndt, 1985). They
also believed that an increase in overall productivity, a modernization of the agricultural
sector and industrialization were all necessary conditions to achieve high and sustainable
rates of growth in the long run.
Despite the numerous positive elements of their empirical and theoretical
approach to economic development, the Anglo-Saxon structuralists deserve criticisms for
at least two reasons. .First, although some authors recognized that the lack of foreign
exchange constituted a constraint on economic growth they did not pay enough attention
to the relation between developed and developing countries. Second, they all had a
limitless faith in the capacity of the state to efficiently intervene in the economic system
(Taylor, 1996).
Overcoming the first problem was one of the key contributions of a different type
of structuralism, the one developed in Latin America under the leadership of the
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) during the 1950s
5and 60s. For the Latin American (LA) structuralists, developed and developing

4 For an excellent overview of the pioneers as well as autobiographical accounts of their views and work on
economic development, see Meier and Seers (1984).
5 The Latin American structuralists shared with their Anglo-Saxon counterpart their excessive faith in the
state and lack a valid theory of state intervention. In fact, both structuralist approaches to economic
development require a much better understanding of the internal structure of the state and of its relations
with society. In recent times the applied work of different political economists (such as Amsden, Evans
and Chang) has contributed to solve this limitation. For a review of their ideas, see Sanchez-Ancochea
(1999).
Anglo-Saxon structuralism vs. Latin American structuralism 3
countries (center and periphery in their terminology) are two different components of a
common world economic system; the evolution of the center determines to a great extend
the structural characteristics of the periphery. In particular, developed countries’ control
of the process of technological innovation, together with their responses to periodic
financial crisis, has a major impact on developing countries’ ability to secure long term
economic growth and export success; at the same time, country-specific institutional
characteristics in Latin America determine their ultimate development paths.
This ability to analyze the interaction between global processes and the domestic
particularities of Latin American countries from a historical perspective makes LA
structuralism particularly relevant in the current global era. While mainstream
economists have begun to recognize the contribution of AS structuralists to development
economics (Krugman, 1997; Ray, 2000), they could probably learn even more from the
work of Raul Prebisch and his colleagues.
By comparing and contrasting the central claims of both AS and LA
structuralism, this chapter shows the unquestionable contribution that both made to the
understanding of economic development. By taking into account both internal and
external forces, I also argue that the LA version is particularly useful to understand the
evolution of the region and, more importantly, may be more relevant for development
studies under globalization.
This chapter begins with a critical discussion of AS structuralist, and its key
theoretical underpinnings. Section 3 introduces ECLAC’s theory of development based
on the notions of center and periphery. Section 4 compares and contrasts both Anglo-Saxon structuralism vs. Latin American structuralism 4
approaches and briefly underlines their potential contribution for the future evolution of
development economics.

2. ANGLO-SAXON STRUCTURALISM IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
Development economics emerged as a sub-discipline of economics in 1943 with the
publication of Rosenstein-Rodan’s “Problems of Industrialization of Eastern and South-
Eastern Europe”. While various historical, political and ideological factors contributed to
its creation, the Keynesian criticism of neoclassical economics and its defense of
government intervention were particularly important. Most early development
economists were in England during the 1940s and participated both in the academic
planning debate that took place at that time and also in the development of the Keynesian
6revolution (Little, 1982). Many of them were also of Eastern European decent and were
thus highly influenced by the relative backwardness of that region (Jamenson and
Warner, 2003).
While the term structuralism is not found in any of the early writings about
development (Arndt, 1985), later economists like Chenery (1975) and Little (1982) used
it to refer to the first development economists and to distinguish their work from
neoclassical economics and neo-Marxism. In their account AS structuralism is based on
the following assumptions about the economy:


6 Many of the “pioneers of development” have a similar biography. They were born in developing
countries (most in Eastern Europe, some in India, Latin America and the Caribbean), studied in United
Kingdom and finished working in United States. For a brief biography of Rosenstein-Rodan, Hirschman,
Lewis and Nurkse, see Eatwell, Milgate and Newman (1987). Anglo-Saxon structuralism vs. Latin American structuralism 5
1. The economy is inflexible and economic change is constrained by obstacles,
bottlenecks and other rigidities (including foreign exchange shortages);
2. Aggregate demand is low and sectoral demands, especially demand for food, are
price-inelastic. As a result, adjustment to equilibrium between supply and demand is
slow and requires large changes in relative prices, which have a large influence on
income distribution;
3. Development requires a radical transformation in the structure of production.
Without industrialization, it is not possible to increase employment, productivity and
income per capita and to reduce poverty;
4. The market alone cannot solve the problems of developing countries because the
price mechanism has at least three major flaws: it is not always a good signaling
mechanism, economic actors may not respond to price changes in the “right” way,
and factors of production tend to be immobile (Arndt, 1985).
5. For them externalities and economies of scale are much more important than what
neoclassical economists usually assume.
In their analytical models AS structuralists usually ignored the influences of
prices, concentrated on real output c