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Where have our Caribbean economists been?
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
THE economic crisis of the Caribbean, we are convinced, is in large measure caused by an intellectual crisis of Caribbean economists.
Our economists have failed since the late 1960s to produce any practical, sustainable policy measures which could have promoted the economic development of the Caribbean.
The region's economic crisis itself is the direct result of a combination of adverse external events emanating from the global financial crisis and long unattended structural and institutional features.
But here's where our economists are to be blamed. First, they are responsible for not providing a pragmatic development alternative and, second, they have generated no policy advice to extricate the region from its present parlous state.
Mr Gordon Brown's new book, Beyond the Crash emphasises that the crisis necessitates new economic thinking. This imperative has eluded Caribbean economists whose largely bad advice of yesterday became today's useless orthodoxy and is tomorrow's irrelevant anachronism.
Caribbean economists have formulated three big ideas, all before 1970. First, Sir Arthur Lewis pointed to industrialisation of labour surplus economies by exporting manufactured goods. Apart from Trinidad, the region failed to grasp this prospect because it was caricatured as "industrialisation by invitation".
Second, Messrs Demas, Thomas and Brewster correctly envisioned regional integration as a means of overcoming some of the disadvantages of small size.
Third, George Beckford explained how in plantation-dominated economies, multinational corporations in the sugar and banana industries impoverished their host economies.
Subsequent output has been "stylised facts in search of a theory" which has been weak in theoretical rigour and weaker in policy recommendations.
The Plantation School, rehashed as Dependency paradigm of Latin Americans, blames the past for our current economic stupor. After this came the Socialist state-directed strategies from which Guyana and Jamaica have never recovered. Regional integration in its extant unfinished form cannot propel regional economies.
Since the halcyon days, Caribbean economists have churned out nothing but criticism with no answers on how to improve the economic development of the region. They blamed the crisis of Caribbean development on foreign investment, multinational corporations, private enterprise, markets, developed countries, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, the Washington Consensus, the CBI, the EPA, natural disasters, globalisation, trade liberalisation, the brain drain and politicians. Nothing wrong with criticism, but they have produced no alternative policy. They should heed Karl Marx's dictum: the point of understanding the world is to change it for the better.
Caribbean economists since the late 1960s have been bereft of original thinking. Much of the work is sterile empiricism or Caribbeanisation of economic thinking which originated from outside the region. Ironic for an intellectual cadre that spurns ideas from outside the region in favour indigenous thought.
It is time to restore scholarship to the Caribbean economics profession so it can once again make practical policy recommendations for the economic development of the region.
Our economists must create original contributions to their field in the same way that our authors, musicians and athletes are doing on the world stage. They have been missing for too long.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...#ixzz18qsuhqR0
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
THE economic crisis of the Caribbean, we are convinced, is in large measure caused by an intellectual crisis of Caribbean economists.
Our economists have failed since the late 1960s to produce any practical, sustainable policy measures which could have promoted the economic development of the Caribbean.
The region's economic crisis itself is the direct result of a combination of adverse external events emanating from the global financial crisis and long unattended structural and institutional features.
But here's where our economists are to be blamed. First, they are responsible for not providing a pragmatic development alternative and, second, they have generated no policy advice to extricate the region from its present parlous state.
Mr Gordon Brown's new book, Beyond the Crash emphasises that the crisis necessitates new economic thinking. This imperative has eluded Caribbean economists whose largely bad advice of yesterday became today's useless orthodoxy and is tomorrow's irrelevant anachronism.
Caribbean economists have formulated three big ideas, all before 1970. First, Sir Arthur Lewis pointed to industrialisation of labour surplus economies by exporting manufactured goods. Apart from Trinidad, the region failed to grasp this prospect because it was caricatured as "industrialisation by invitation".
Second, Messrs Demas, Thomas and Brewster correctly envisioned regional integration as a means of overcoming some of the disadvantages of small size.
Third, George Beckford explained how in plantation-dominated economies, multinational corporations in the sugar and banana industries impoverished their host economies.
Subsequent output has been "stylised facts in search of a theory" which has been weak in theoretical rigour and weaker in policy recommendations.
The Plantation School, rehashed as Dependency paradigm of Latin Americans, blames the past for our current economic stupor. After this came the Socialist state-directed strategies from which Guyana and Jamaica have never recovered. Regional integration in its extant unfinished form cannot propel regional economies.
Since the halcyon days, Caribbean economists have churned out nothing but criticism with no answers on how to improve the economic development of the region. They blamed the crisis of Caribbean development on foreign investment, multinational corporations, private enterprise, markets, developed countries, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, the Washington Consensus, the CBI, the EPA, natural disasters, globalisation, trade liberalisation, the brain drain and politicians. Nothing wrong with criticism, but they have produced no alternative policy. They should heed Karl Marx's dictum: the point of understanding the world is to change it for the better.
Caribbean economists since the late 1960s have been bereft of original thinking. Much of the work is sterile empiricism or Caribbeanisation of economic thinking which originated from outside the region. Ironic for an intellectual cadre that spurns ideas from outside the region in favour indigenous thought.
It is time to restore scholarship to the Caribbean economics profession so it can once again make practical policy recommendations for the economic development of the region.
Our economists must create original contributions to their field in the same way that our authors, musicians and athletes are doing on the world stage. They have been missing for too long.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...#ixzz18qsuhqR0