Research On "Prehistory" Of Development Economics

Content:The Mercantilism, Friedrich List’s economics, and American School are the real origins of development economics which could be regarded as the prehistory of development economics. Under the condition of unequal productivity, these schools point out the essences of development economics which emphasize the government role in industrialization including establishing advantage industry with protection policy, integrating production of factors and consolidating social system. It reveals that the development economics should insist on the principle of holding "development sovereignty" while avoid pitfall of orthodox economics. Meanwhile, the development economics should introduce historical method exploring the rise and fall of countries, and widen the research visions by absorbing thoughts from humanistic and social science.This paper selects three typical industrialized countries including UK, Germany and USA to investigate their economic histories and the guiding ideologies.As the first industrialized country, UK was boosted by the Mercantilism. Mercantilists manage external trade with methods which are good for manufacturing industry. They pay more attentions to turn currency into capital to promote manufacturing industry. Meanwhile, they set developing dominant-position manufacturing as the core to govern policies in economic and social areas. Accordingly, integrated transition of organizations, society, nations and systems are pushed. If the modified Mercantilism opinions are reviewed by common definition of Development Economics, it is not difficult to find that Mercantilism includes abundant development intensions and should be viewed as an important origin of Development Economics.Friedrich List, the man who had conducted the industrialization of Germany, thought highly of the contribution of Mercantilism and called it "Industrialism ". After absorbing the Mercantilism Thought, the national economics system is based on stage theory of development and the theory of productivity. It views industrialization as the core and is supported by state intervention and infant industries protection. National economics system sketched a blueprint of integrated development for undeveloped countries’strategy of modernization. It successfully converted the agricultural country into an industrialized one. If Mercantilism is still viewed as scattered thoughts, the theoretical result of List made him deserve to be a development economist.In addition, Mercantile Thought in late-Qing Dynasty explained an untraditional concept of development. A topic of how to realize modernization in undeveloped China was discussed. Issues such as tariff protection, import and export substitution, industrialization, coordinated development of industries, state intervention, "science and technology establishing a country", system transformation and cultural transition were widely involved. Mercantile Thought became the pioneer that explored thoughts of industrialization from 1910 to 1940 and helped to generate the famous writing of "Agriculture and Industrialization" which was written by Zhang Peigang, a development economist.Based on such a new framework of evolution for development economics which adding this "prehistory" of Development Economics from Mercantilism, to Friedrich List, and to American School, problems in existing development economics could be treat differently. No matter disputed policies and arguments among different schools of thought, it is no longer absolute for developing countries that whether Development Economics is appropriate. On the one hand, it needs to take the stage of developing countries into consideration; on the other hand, it needs to combine with the cultural and political factors to analyze dynamically and make sure the appropriate theories and policies in an open system. From the perspective of internal improvement of developing countries, determinism of single element and simple and narrow economics (materials) should be avoided. The development theme should be combined tightly with the comprehensive transition and historical culture of a nation.