The Historical Evolution Of Economic Catch-up Theory And Its Contemporary Enlightenment

How to narrow the gap with the developed countries and even surpass the developed countries is one of the most important questions considered every late-developing country.It is also the most important issue for development economics.Therefore,countless economists around the late-developing countries how to achieve the catch-up of advanced countries carried out continuous exploration and research,and formed a lot of economic catch-up ideas or theories,and in practice formed a variety of catch-up institution and policy system.This paper reviews the related theories from the early economic catch-up theory that Mercantilism,List’s economics and American school,until to the contemporary theory that Structuralism,Neo-structuralism,New Listian and other economic catch-up theory,combs the evolution process of catch-up theory history systematically,and summarize the contents and their internal relations of catching up theory in the different periods comprehensively.At the same time of studying the history of economic catch-up theory,this paper also analyzes the actual performance about the use of economic catch-up theory in various countries in detail,and find that dealing with the relationship between the government and the market well is very important for economic catch-up.And that the type of government-to-market relationship depends on the chosen development strategy.Therefore,whether the late-developing countries can achieve economic catch-up lies mainly in whether there is a suitable development strategy as a guide.This paper argues that there are about three kinds of development strategies that have been carried out by the late-developing country,that is,the comparative advantage strategy,the appropriate catch-up strategy,the comprehensive catch-up strategy.The comparative advantage strategy,on the basis of strict assumptions,comes to the comparative advantage path of economic development,but it ignores the effect of factors in late-developing country such as imperfect system,economies of scale,capital heterogeneity,trade conflict,national scale and so on.However,these factors are the important reasons asking the government to play a role in economic catch-up.If the government chooses "absence",it is likely that the economy will fall into the"comparative advantage trap".Corresponding to the comparative advantage,there is also a misunderstanding of the overall catch-up strategy,the government’s excessive participation in the economy can suppress the market mechanism function.This"offside" behavior of the government will eventually put the economy into a "full catch-up trap".In order to attain the aim of complementary advantages and removing disadvantages of above two development strategies,this paper puts forward appropriate catch-up strategy,that is,while developing the comparative advantage industry vigorously,carefully choose those industries which have technologies and human capital spillover,high degree of conjunction and prospects for development.To make them develop rapidly,we can use the way of making full use of domestic economies of scale and the advantages of backwardness,reducing transaction costs and increasing external subsidies,etc.So as to form a positive interaction mechanism between government and market and between technological progress and industry upgrading,and then achieve the cumulative accumulation of sustainable development."Appropriate" is the point of "appropriate catch-up strategy".Its core content is that the strategy must be established firmly on the basis of comparative advantages of industry,reasonably choose catch-up industry with a reference of comparative advantage,complete scientific cost-benefit analysis of catch-up industry,and strive to achieve profit maximization.From a dynamic perspective,the paper further analyzes the different meanings of "appropriate" in the different stages of economic development.Of all the factors that make appropriate catch-up strategy successful,"effective government" is most critical.It requires that the government should not only do something in the protection of property rights,the maintenance of market competition rules and other traditional functions to make a difference,but also timely provide the infrastructure,institutional structure and human capital needed for the development of appropriate catch-up industry,and provide a full range of support in the field of trade,technology and finance at the same time.