Lessons from development experience

After World War II it was thought that developing countries would require foreign aid in their early stages of development. This aid would supplement the capital created by domestic savings, permitting a higher rate of investment and thus stimulating growth. It was expected that their reliance on official sources of additional capital would continue until their economies had progressed enough to gain them access to private international capital markets.

Until the 1980s this pattern seemed to evolve as predicted. In the 1950s almost all capital flows to developing countries were from official sources, in the form of foreign aid from developed countries or of resources from the multilateral institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In the 1960s some of the export-oriented, rapidly growing countries began to rely on private international capital markets. Some, such as Singapore, attracted direct private foreign investment; others, such as South Korea, relied more on borrowing from commercial banks. In the 1970s many oil-importing developing countries were able to turn to borrowing from private sources when their economies were hit by the severe oil price increase of 1973.

The borrowing by rapidly growing countries was of the type earlier envisaged. Investment yielded a very high rate of return in these countries, so additional foreign resources could be attracted and productively used. However, some other countries borrowed in order to offset higher oil prices and in order to maintain an excess of expenditures over consumption, without developing the highly profitable investments with which to finance the debt-servicing obligations they incurred. Balance-of-payments crises and debt-servicing difficulties had been experienced by a few countries in most years since the 1950s, but with the second oil price increase and the worldwide recession of the early 1980s, developing countries increased their borrowing and total indebtedness sharply until commercial banks virtually ceased voluntary lending after Mexico experienced difficulty meeting its obligations in 1982. The result was that a large number of developing countries were unable to meet their debt obligations, as export earnings declined owing to the recession, interest rates were rising, and new money was not forthcoming.

For many heavily indebted developing countries, the consequence was a prolonged period of slow growth or even declines in outputs and incomes. The lessons were several: The buoyant conditions of the 1970s were not likely to recur, and policies that had sustained satisfactory growth rates in those conditions were not likely to do so in the future; countries that had not yet moved away from import-substitution policies and direct governmental controls would need to undertake structural adjustments rather rapidly in order to resume their growth and to restore creditworthiness; and future private lending to developing countries would need to be somewhat more discriminating as to the economic prospects of recipient countries.

Modern economic development started in Great Britain, which in the 1780s accounted for a little over 1 percent of the total world population at that time. Since then, economic development has spread in widening circles to other parts of the world, spurred on by a series of technological innovations, particularly in the form of improvements in transport and communications. In the early decades of the 19th century the circle of the developed countries was limited to western Europe. By the late 19th century the circle had widened to include North America, Australia and New Zealand, and Japan. By the early 1970s about 34 percent of the total world population belonged to the developed countries, which among them had 87.5 percent of the total world GNP. What are the prospects of the still-to-develop countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa joining this circle of economic development?

On the negative side there are a number of factors that add to their difficulties. First, the level of per capita product in the present-day developing countries is much lower than in the developed countries in their preindustrialization phase (with the exception of Japan). Second, the present-day developing countries have large population bases and are handicapped by much faster rates of population growth. Third, they have generally a much weaker social and political framework to cope with the more explosive forces of discontent engendered by their reaction against their colonial past and by their internal economic disparities.

On the positive side, the present-day developing countries can draw upon a greater store of scientific and technical knowledge from the developed countries. The potential opportunities to exploit the “technological gap” are not confined to manufacturing. Modern science and technology can make immense contributions to agriculture, as illustrated by the Green Revolution created by the introduction of improved seeds and fertilizers in some Asian and Latin-American countries. Modern methods of birth control can make a decisive contribution in the race for raising per capita incomes. In addition, as the circle of the developed countries widens, they are bound to exert an increasing upward pull on the developing countries.

The economic growth of the developed countries has generally resulted in an expanding demand for the products and sometimes for direct labour services from the developing countries. But there are also the stronger localized pulls, such as the pull of the United States economy on Mexico and the pull of western Europe on the developing countries of southern Europe. The spectacular economic growth of Japan since World War II may also exert a similar pull on neighbouring countries in East Asia.

Countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are rapidly approaching developed-country status, and the circle is widening still farther. Rapid growth rates are being experienced by many countries in Southeast Asia. If one considers the successful developing countries of the 1950s and ’60s, it is evident that the rapid growth of the international economy was a very positive contributing factor in their success. Future widening of the circle will no doubt depend in large part on whether the growth of the international economy attains a satisfactory level.

In conclusion, the experience of the postwar years has provided many lessons that form a basis for optimism. A great deal has been learned about the types of economic policies that are conducive to rapid economic development. Rates of growth of per capita income experienced by the developing countries have been significantly higher than had been achieved by the first countries to develop. Attainable rates of growth of per capita income appear to be far above what formerly was thought feasible. The chief potential obstacles to successful development appear to be the spectre of disintegration of the international economy, should protectionist pressures be increasingly effective, and the inability or unwillingness of leaders in developing countries to adopt policies conducive to rapid economic growth.

The statistics of national incomes and rates of growth are supplied in the World Development Report 1987 (1987), published for the World Bank. Conceptual problems of national income measurement are discussed in Simon Kuznets, Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure and Spread (1966); and Gerald M. Meier, Leading Issues in Economic Development, 4th ed. (1984). For specific problems of developing countries, see H. Myint, The Economics of the Developing Countries, 5th ed. (1980); Ian M.D. Little, Economic Development: Theory, Policy, and International Relations (1982); Martin Fransman (ed.), Machinery and Economic Development (1986); and Graham Bird, International Financial Policy and Economic Development: A Disaggregated Approach (1987). The role of foreign exchange is studied in Anne O. Krueger (ed.), Trade and Employment in Developing Countries, 3 vol. (1981–83). For a good exposition of growth economics, see Robert M. Solow, Growth Theory, enl. ed. (1988); John Hicks, Capital and Growth (1965, reissued 1972); and John Woronoff, Asia’s “Miracle” Economies (1986).