IntroductionIV

　　Multilateral institutions and development agencies were the main advocates

　　for this wave of thinking and infl uenced economic policies in developing

　　countries through their programs. They based much of their policy

　　advice and conditionality on stabilization and structural adjustment programs

　　that refl ected the new dominant paradigm and promoted economic

　　liberalization, privatization, and the implementation of rigorous stabilization

　　programs. The results of these policies for growth and employment

　　generation were at best controversial.

　　Something strange and unexpected happened in the recent history of

　　economic development: it was observed that developing countries that

　　succeeded during the second half of the 20th century did not follow the

　　dominant development thinking or the policy prescriptions of the fi rst and

　　second wave. That puzzling fact convinced researchers to revisit some of

　　the big assumptions underlying theories of economic development.

　　As pointed out, countries that have led the world growth since the Industrial

　　Revolution and developing countries that have successfully converged

　　with developed countries all experienced profound structural changes in the

　　composition of employment and the relative contribution of primary, secondary

　　and tertiary sectors to aggregate growth. Drawing lessons from the

　　intellectual advances, controversies, and disappointments of development

　　economics, a third wave of development thinking, advanced by a small

　　group of economists such as Dani Rodrik, Ricardo Hausmann, Andres

　　Velasco, Philippe Aghion, Michael Spence, Ann Harrison, Célestin Monga,

　　myself, and a few others is well under way. It aims at bringing structural

　　change back to the core of development studies, and it emphasizes the

　　important roles for the market and the state in the process of promoting

　　economic development. These economists all agree that the market should

　　be the basic mechanism for resource allocation, but that government must

　　play an active role in coordinating investments for industrial upgrading

　　and diversifi cation and in compensating for externalities generated by fi rst

　　movers in the dynamic growth process.

本文摘自《新結構經濟學》

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　　 Economic development is a process of continuous technological innovation and structural transformation. Development thinking is inherently tied to the quest for sustainable growth strategies. This book provides a neoclassical approach for studying the determinants of economic structure and its transformation and draws new insights for development policy. The market is the basic mechanism for effective resource allocation at each level of development. However, economic development as a dynamic process entails structural changes, including industrial upgrading and diversification and corresponding improvements in hard and soft infrastructure. Such upgrading and improvements require coordination and go hand in hand with large externalities to firms transaction costs and returns to capital investment. Thus, in addition to an effective market mechanism, the government should play an active role in facilitating structural changes. The book provides empirical evidence in support of this framework as well as concrete advice to development practitioners.