Economic Backwardness and the Characteristics of Development

Abstract

Alexander Gerschenkron has suggested that certain characteristics of development during a country's initial period of industrialization, or “great spurt,” can be better understood if reference is made to that country's degree of relative backwardness just prior to the spurt. Referring to the European countries which began their rapid industrialization during the nineteenth century, Gerschenkron stated that the greater a country's relative backwardness on the eve of its spurt (1) the more rapid was the subsequent rate of manufacturing growth, (2) the greater was the stress on bigness of the size of plant and enterprise, (3) the greater was the stress on producers’ goods as opposed to consumers’ goods, (4) the less rapid was the increase in the level of consumption, (5) the greater was the role played by special institutional factors designed to speed industrialization, and (6) the less the agricultural sector contributed to economic growth, as measured by the rate of increase in agricultural labor productivity.