How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor

Reinert, Erik S.

ISBN 10: 1845298748 / ISBN 13: 9781845298746

Published by Constable, 2008

About this Item

Reprint. Very good condition paperback with minimal wear. Contents are clean and bright throughout with no markings.

Seller Inventory # 9999-99989688953

Bibliographic Details

• Title: How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor
• Publisher: Constable
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1845298748
• ISBN 13: 9781845298746
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

How Rich Countries Got Rich is a narrative history of modern economic development from the Italian Renaissance to the present day.

In it Erik S. Reinert shows how rich countries developed through a combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment. Reinert suggests that this set of policies in various combinations has driven successful development from Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East. Yet despite its demonstrable success, orthodox development economists have largely ignored this approach and insisted instead on the importance of free trade.

Reinert presents a strongly revisionist history of economics and shows how the discipline has long been torn between the continental Renaissance tradition on one hand and the free market theories of English and later American economics on the other. He argues that our economies were founded on protectionism and state activism and could only later afford the luxury of free trade. When our leaders come to lecture poor countries on the right road to riches they do so in almost perfect ignorance of the real history of mass affluence.

About the Author

Erik S. Reinert, author of Globalization, Economic Development and Inequality: An Alternative Perspective (2004), is Professor of Technology, Governance and Development Strategies at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, and President of The Other Canon Foundation, Norway. He is one of the world's leading heterodox development economists and is based in Norway.