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Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality

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The book Development and Underdevelopment: The political economy of global inequality, is an economist's dream. It is full of articles with tables and figures that relate underdevelopment to all kind of factors. There are things that only an economist can appreciate such as Maximum Likelihood Estimations for the Once-Rich Twenty-Two, page 176, and OLS Regression of Effects of LFANGS38GDP on Economic Growth, page 349. Many figures and tables are badly labeled, but after some study you can get the intent. There is no chapter on the elephant in the room which is foreign debt. There are competing academic theories with pros and cons, without a final conclusion, and nobody is to blame.

For a better understanding of the underdevelopment problem take some time with the book: Trade, Development and Foreign Debt: How trade and development concentrate economic power in the hands of dominant nations, by Michael Hudson, 440 pages, ISLET, 2009. Following is a quotation from the 1992 edition of this book, page 457:

"From the British mercantilists through the early free traders and subsequent protectionists, probably the single most important policy inspiration has been the desire to understand the world's polarisation tendencies. The objective has been either to put them in place to consolidate one's lead, or to help less industrialised nations catch up. On the one hand this objective has involved an analysis of how lead-nations might achieve widening productivity and cost advantages for their industry and agriculture. The other side of the coin has been a review of how the colonial and postcolonial periphery has become malformed by what I [Michael Hudson] call `the Monoculture Syndrome' with its economically and politically obsolete labour, agriculture, capital and oligarchic governments."

After reading Hudson's book you will certainly have an understanding of the world's polarisation tendencies, which you will not get from Development and Underdevelopment.