Sunday, February 26, 2006

Myrdal's Theory of Development

I did a bit of catch up reading this weekend (besides picking avocados and spotting the tails of whale sharks from the beach) where I came upon this Swedish economist named Gunnar Myrdal. He started to change the way of thinking of economics to include factors not dealing solely on markets but as well with non-economic factors of welfare, and standards of living. He came up with conditions that can either move a country either forward or backward depending on investment on resources for industrialization, distribution of income and land reform, and promotion of social equality. He used his studies to prove that a nation cannot grow without the elimination of poverty and inequality. We may think that this is obvious now but he started this movement of thinking with his publication Asian Drama and his works to follow. He also argued that people should not accept an inevitability of inequality because it is morally unacceptable but also that it is causally not true.

2 comments:

Bill said...

Hey diggs I like reading what you write on what you're learning. You should post a list with authors or book titles.

digtabulous said...

word up bill. I'll do my best. Right now, articles from dev. econ. journals seem to be bombarding my reading world. like these days seem to revolve around J. Stiglitz and his thoughts on post-Washington Consensus...