A structuralist and institutionalist developmental assessment of and reaction to new developmentalism

Abstract

This paper provides a critical assessment of the New Developmental view summarized in Bresser-Pereira (2016). It is argued that although New Developmentalism correctly observes that Classical Developmentalism underestimated and insufficiently considered the role of demand as a motor of growth (this critique also applies to modern Schumpeterian views), New Developmentalism theoretically reduces or explains changes in quantities (in particular external demand) to the price mechanism (in particular the exchange rate). It is argued that the New Developmental narrative of comparative development underestimates the role of industrial policy and domestic demand in increasing productivity. Instead, New Developmentalism makes the real exchange rate the main lever for investment, structural change, and productivity growth. At the same time, New Developmentalism’s description of some development trajectories is actually (though it is unacknowledged) closer to Classical Developmentalism, modern Institutionalism, and Schumpeterian thinking. Those intellectual traditions argue that development and structural change require strategic policies which go far beyond managing macroeconomic prices.