Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Chapter 16 The Economics of Reindeer Herding: Saami Entrepreneurship between Cyclical Sustainability and the Powers of State and Oligopolies
- Chapter 17 European Integration, Innovations and Uneven Economic Growth: Challenges and Problems of EU 2005
- Chapter 18 Institutionalism Ancient, Old and New: A Historical Perspective on Institutions and Uneven Development
- Chapter 19 European Eastern Enlargement as Europe’s Attempted Economic Suicide?
- Chapter 20 The Economics of Failed, Failing and Fragile States: Productive Structure as the Missing Link
- Chapter 21 Emulation vs. Comparative Advantage: Competing and Complementary Principles in the History of Economic Policy
- Chapter 22 The Terrible Simplifers: Common Origins of Financial Crises and Persistent Poverty in Economic Theory and the New ‘1848 Moment’
- Chapter 23 Industrial Restructuring and Innovation Policy in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990
- Chapter 24 Capitalist Dynamics: A Technical Note
- Chapter 25 Neo-Classical Economics: A Trail of Economic Destruction
- Chapter 26 Modernizing Russia: Round III. Russia and the Other BRIC Countries: Forging Ahead, Catching Up or Falling Behind?
- Chapter 27 Economics and the Public Sphere: The Rise of Esoteric Knowledge, Refeudalization, Crisis and Renewal
- Chapter 28 Three Veblenian Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises
- Chapter 29 Civilizing Capitalism: “Good” and “Bad” Greed from the Enlightenment to Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
- Chapter 30 Failed and Asymmetrical Integration: Eastern Europe and the Non-financial Origins of the European Crisis
- Chapter 31 Renewables, Manufacturing and Green Growth: Energy Strategies Based on Capturing Increasing Returns
- Chapter 32 Financial Crises and Countermovements: Comparing the Times and Attitudes of Marriner Eccles (1930s) and Mario Draghi (2010s)
- Chapter 33 The Inequalities That Could Not Happen: What the Cold War Did to Economics
- Chapter 34 Industrial Policy: A Long-term Perspective and Overview of Theoretical Arguments
- Index
Chapter 21 - Emulation vs. Comparative Advantage: Competing and Complementary Principles in the History of Economic Policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Chapter 16 The Economics of Reindeer Herding: Saami Entrepreneurship between Cyclical Sustainability and the Powers of State and Oligopolies
- Chapter 17 European Integration, Innovations and Uneven Economic Growth: Challenges and Problems of EU 2005
- Chapter 18 Institutionalism Ancient, Old and New: A Historical Perspective on Institutions and Uneven Development
- Chapter 19 European Eastern Enlargement as Europe’s Attempted Economic Suicide?
- Chapter 20 The Economics of Failed, Failing and Fragile States: Productive Structure as the Missing Link
- Chapter 21 Emulation vs. Comparative Advantage: Competing and Complementary Principles in the History of Economic Policy
- Chapter 22 The Terrible Simplifers: Common Origins of Financial Crises and Persistent Poverty in Economic Theory and the New ‘1848 Moment’
- Chapter 23 Industrial Restructuring and Innovation Policy in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990
- Chapter 24 Capitalist Dynamics: A Technical Note
- Chapter 25 Neo-Classical Economics: A Trail of Economic Destruction
- Chapter 26 Modernizing Russia: Round III. Russia and the Other BRIC Countries: Forging Ahead, Catching Up or Falling Behind?
- Chapter 27 Economics and the Public Sphere: The Rise of Esoteric Knowledge, Refeudalization, Crisis and Renewal
- Chapter 28 Three Veblenian Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises
- Chapter 29 Civilizing Capitalism: “Good” and “Bad” Greed from the Enlightenment to Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
- Chapter 30 Failed and Asymmetrical Integration: Eastern Europe and the Non-financial Origins of the European Crisis
- Chapter 31 Renewables, Manufacturing and Green Growth: Energy Strategies Based on Capturing Increasing Returns
- Chapter 32 Financial Crises and Countermovements: Comparing the Times and Attitudes of Marriner Eccles (1930s) and Mario Draghi (2010s)
- Chapter 33 The Inequalities That Could Not Happen: What the Cold War Did to Economics
- Chapter 34 Industrial Policy: A Long-term Perspective and Overview of Theoretical Arguments
- Index
Summary
The objective of this chapter is to show how economic policies based on completely different principles – one described as ‘emulation’ and the other as ‘comparative advantage’ – have been strategically employed in order to achieve economic development when nations have made the transition from poor to wealthy. It also briefly describes key aspects of the process by which Europe, through emulation, developed from a collection of fiefdoms ruled by warlords into city-states and later to nation-states. It is argued that the timing of the strategic shift from emulation to comparative advantage is of utmost importance to a nation. Making this policy shift too early will hamper development much as a late shift will do. It is argued that these principles, although sometimes under different names, were well known and employed by European nations from the seventeenth century onwards – in the United States all the way to the end of the nineteenth century – and that the Marshall Plan implemented in 1947, owed its success to putting the principle of emulation chronologically ahead of comparative advantage.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines emulation as ‘the endeavor to equal or surpass others in any achievement or quality’; also ‘the desire or ambition to equal or to excel.’ In eighteenth-century political and economic discourse, emulation was essentially a positive and active effort, to be contrasted with envy or jealousy (Hont, 2005). In modern terms emulation finds its approximate counterparts in the terminology of US economist Moses Abramovitz, whose ideas of ‘catching-up’, ‘forging ahead’ and ‘falling behind’ resonate with the same understanding of dynamic competition. In his 1693 work English economist Josiah Child made the emulative nature of English catching-up very clear: ‘If we intend to have the Trade of the World, we must imitate the Dutch, who make the worst as well as the best of all manufactures, that we may be in a capacity of serving all Markets, and all Humors.’
By focusing on barter alone, leaving out the dynamics of innovation and competition, Ricardian trade theory neglects a core element inherent to capitalism. There is no forging ahead, nor is there any falling behind, in Ricardian economics, nor in any other type of economics based on metaphors of equilibrium. In a Schumpeterian framework,
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- Information
- The Other Canon of EconomicsEssays in the Theory and History of Uneven Economic Development, pp. 619 - 642Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2024