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Kicking Away the Ladder

Introduction

The book, 'Kicking Away the Ladder' is written by Ha-Joon Chang. He is one of the prominent scholars of the heterodox school in the area of economics. In this book, he presents the comparison between the heterodox and the mainstream approaches on the economic development of the developing countries. He has used a historical perspective in explaining the initial stages of development in the developing countries (Veliyev, pp.1).

He says that these countries have used the ITT policies i.e. the industry, trade and technology policies, but when they were in the stage of development they could not achieve institutional development as compared to the developed countries. In his book, he argues that the developing countries face a lot of pressure to implement good policies and institutions to develop themselves economically. He says that people are skeptical of the capability of the developing countries' to implement these policies and institutions.

Discussion

Ha-Joon Chang argues that the developed countries did not achive success by implementing these good policies and institutions. Most of the countries used bad and unfair trade policies which helped them in achieving success. The general, bad industrial policies were the infant industry protection and export subsidies (Chang, pp. 1). These policies were not banned by the WTO previously. Countries like United States and United Kingdom were the most regular users of these policies in their stages of development. With the help, of these policies, they achieved success, and we think of them as free—trade and free-market policies.

When these countries were in their developing stage, the institutions and policies that are now deemed necessary for developing countries were not present in these countries. Countries that were in the stage of development back then had low-quality institutions as compared to the institutions present in today's developing countries.

Ha-Joon is right when he says that the developing countries, which were in, the stage of development in the 19th century used unfair means to develop themselves and are now super powers. These countries used means of development that are not acceptable in today's world. This is the main reason that these countries achieved success quickly as compared to other countries.

Unfair trade and industrial policies were the main reason that the companies achieved success. The theory of infant industry protection was corrected in the 19th century by Friedrich List. List pointed out that UK and US used this policy to develop their countries in the 19th century (Chang, pp. 2). He says that they used such methods 'kicking away the ladder by which he climbed up', so that other do not use the same method and become as successful as they are. This is where the name of this book comes from.

Next, Ha-Joon analyses the orthodox approach of economic development of the developed countries, in this book. He further evaluates the historical path of Britain and USA, and shows how the theory of the protection of infant industry proved to be beneficial for the United States and the United Kingdom. These countries urged the ...