Nick Johnson — Free-market policies rarely make poor countries rich (Ha-Joon Chang’s Thing 7)

These telling extracts from Ha-Joon Chang‘s 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism come from ‘Thing 7’ (p. 63-5):

[the country described above]…is the USA, around 1880…one of the fastest-growing – and rapidly becoming one of the richest – countries in the world…[following] policy recipes that go almost totally against today’s neo-liberal free-market orthodoxy.”

When the US was developing in the 19th century, the British economy was dominant and the British system was therefore the model. However, developed the American system to counter it as more suitable for an emerging economy, initially under the aegis of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton sought to emulate the aspects of the British system that were useful to the developing US, but to adapt it and add methods that would be more appropriate for current conditions.

The Political Economy of Development

Free-market policies rarely make poor countries rich (Ha-Joon Chang’s Thing 7)

Nick Johnson