Crescita, convergenza e strategie di sviluppo:alcune riflessioni - Some Reflections on Growth, Convergence and Development Strategies

The available evidence shows that less developed countries (LDCs) have been quite systematically excluded from the catch-up process. The absence of Laces’ convergence stands in striking contrast with the implications stemming from the traditional growth model. The recent revival of interest in growth theory since the mid- ‘80s has sensibly enhanced the scope f or public intervention; nevertheless, current policy proposals by international agencies tend to support outward-oriented strategies which exclude a significant role of the State in the development process. The present paper aims at providing a critical assessment about development strategies suggested by international agencies, both in the light of empirical findings on convergence and in the light of some Basie results achieved by endogenous growth theory. The main conclusion of this work is that policy proposals advocated by international agencies are questionable since they tend to put, at the same time, too little emphasis on the role of the State and too much emphasis on the role of exports in driving the development process. As far as the former aspect is concerned, our critique relies on various theoretical arguments (increasing returns to scale, asymmetric information in labor and capital markets, real and pecuniary externalities), on several implications associated with the catch-up literature (relevance of socio-economic infrastructures, protection of property rights, strengthening of LDCs’ contractual power in international technology transfers), and on the concrete experience of some newly industrialized Asian countries. Turning to the latter question (excessive confidence on outward-oriented strategies), we firstly discuss some methodological flaws associated with econometric investigations concerned with the export-growth link, and finally argue that the above relationship can be considered neither stable nor unidirectional since it turns out to be crucially affected by many macroeconomic variables.