Can an Evolutionary Approach to Development Predict Post-War Economic Growth?
Author(s)
Putterman, Louis
Abstract
The article explores the hypothesis that a substantial portion of the variation in growth performance among developing countries in the second half of the twentieth century is attributable to differences in economic and social preconditions to growth that can be understood by means of a long-term evolutionary perspective of the type advanced by economic anthropologists and demographers. The author proposes that the initial position of the society or societies comprising a present-day nation, with respect to a production system intensity continuum stretching from low-population-density hunter-gatherer societies, on the one extreme, to high-population-density agriculture-based societies marked by large states, taxation, and specialised commerce, on the other, is an important predictor of that nation’s growth performance in recent decades, after controlling for the determinants of growth treated in the standard literature.
