Question

Attempt Economic Backwardness.

Answer 1

This article challenges the traditional view of French industry—that small, inefficient family firms retarded France's economic growth—by examining data for the French textile and flour milling industries taken from the industry census of 1861–1865. The evidence suggests that the average size of French firms suited the economic and technological conditions of the day. The industries studied exhibit constant returns to scale over a wide output range. France would not seem likely to have gained much from larger firms. This is consistent with revisionist contentions that French industry was as rational as that of other nations.

IN current discussions the terms' underdeveloped'and'backward'are generally used as though they were completely interchangeable by applying them to aggregate geographical concepts such as' countries','areas', and'regions', or by equating them with certain broad indices such as low incomes or capital investment per head. It is more illuminating, in my view, to give these terms different connotations by using the former to mean underdeveloped resources, and the latter to refer to the backward people of a given area. In this paper I shall argue that this distinction is fundamental to the understanding of the nature of economic backwardness.

I The difference in approach in terms of'underdeveloped resources' and in terms of'backward people'can best be illustrated by examining the current fashion of including not only the natural resources but also the so-called'human resources' under the generic heading of'underdeveloped resources', which seems to imply that the two terms we have distinguished really overlap. But is it merely a matter of taste or tact whether we choose to speak of'backward people'or of'underdeveloped human resources'? On a close examination it will be seen that each term has its own hinterland of associated ideas and the two cannot be superimposed on each other without creating a number of serious logical difficulties. In common-sense terms, a'backward people'may be defined as a group of people who are in some fashion or other unsuccessful in the economic struggle to earn a livelihood. Thus we are starting from a Classical or Marshallian distinction between man, on the one hand, and his environ-ment on the other: only then can we think of a group of people as being successful or otherwise in adapting themselves to their environment. Further, the idea of'backwardness' inevitably implies a comparison of different degrees of success in this economic struggle: some groups of people are less successful or'backward'compared with other more successful or'advanced'groups. Thus the nature of backwardness would lose much of its significance if applied to a homogeneous group of people without international economic relations. It is when a self-sufficient primitiv

American Political Science Review 100 (1), 115-131, 2006

We construct a simple model where political elites may block technological and institutional development, because of a “political replacement effect.” Innovations often erode elites' incumbency advantage, increasing the likelihood that they will be replaced. Fearing replacement, political elites are unwilling to initiate change and may even block economic development. We show that the relationship between blocking and political competition is nonmonotonic: elites are unlikely to block development when there is a high degree of political competition or when they are highly entrenched. It is only when political competition is limited and also when their power is threatened that elites will block development. Blocking is also more likely when political stakes are higher, for example, because of land rents enjoyed by the elites. External threats, on the other hand, may reduce the incentives to block.