主题：【文摘】Kicking Away the Ladder -- 咪铛

The story is similar in relation to institutional development. In the earlier stages of their development, today’s developed countries did not even have such “basic” institutions as professional civil service, central bank, and patent law. It was only after the Pendleton Act in 1883 that the US federal government started recruiting its employees through a competitive process. The central bank, an institution dear to the heart of today’s free-market economists, did not exist in most of today’s rich countries until the early 20th century – not least because the free-market economists of the day condemned it as a mechanism for unjustly bailing out imprudent borrowers. The US central bank (the Federal Reserve Board) was set up only in 1913 and the Italian central bank did not even have a note issue monopoly until 1926. Many countries allowed patenting of foreign invention until the late 19th century. As I mentioned above, Switzerland and the Netherlands refused to introduce a patent law despite international pressure until 1907 and 1912 respectively, thus freely “stole” technologies from abroad. The examples can go on.

One important conclusion that emerges from the history of institutional development is that it took the developed countries a long time to develop institutions in their earlier days of development. Institutions typically took decades, and sometimes generations, to develop. Just to give one example, the need for central banking was perceived at least in some circles from at least the 17th century, but the first “real” central bank, the Bank of England, was instituted only in 1844, some two centuries later.

Another important point emerges is that the levels of institutional development in today’s developed countries in the earlier period were much lower than those in today’s developing countries. For example, measured by the (admittedly highly imperfect) income level, in 1820, the UK was at a somewhat higher level of development than that of India today, but it did not even have many of the most “basic” institutions that India has today. It did not have universal suffrage (it did not even have universal male suffrage), a central bank, income tax, generalised limited liability, a generalised bankruptcy law, a professional bureaucracy, meaningful securities regulations, and even minimal labour regulations (except for a couple of minimal and hardly-enforced regulations on child labour).

If the policies and institutions that the rich countries are recommending to the poor countries are not the ones that they themselves used when they were developing, what is going on? We can only conclude that the rich countries are trying to kick away the ladder that allowed them to climb where they are. It is no coincidence that economic development has become more difficult during the last two decades when the developed countries started turning on the pressure on the developing countries to adopt the so-called “global standard” policies and institutions.

During this period, the average annual per capita income growth rate for the developing countries has been halved from 3% in the previous two decades (1960-80) to 1.5%. In particular, Latin America virtually stopped growing, while Sub-Saharan Africa and most ex-Communist countries have experienced a fall in absolute income. Economic instability has increased markedly, as manifested in the dozens of financial crises we have witnessed over the last decade alone. Income inequality has been growing in many developing countries and poverty has increased, rather than decreased, in a significant number of them.

What can be done to change this?

First, the historical facts about the historical experiences of the developed countries should be more widely publicised. This is not just a matter of “getting history right”, but also of allowing the developing countries to make more informed choices.

Second, the conditions attached to bilateral and multilateral financial assistance to developing countries should be radically changed. It should be accepted that the orthodox recipe is not working, and also that there can be no “best practice” policies that everyone should use.

Third, the WTO rules should be re-written so that the developing countries can more actively use tariffs and subsidies for industrial development. They should also be allowed to have less stringent patent laws and other intellectual property rights laws.

摘要：关于公共机构的发展故事也是类似的。中央银行，自由市场的心脏，到20世纪早期才出现在大多数富裕国家。19世纪晚期，很多国家允许patent外国人的发明，瑞士和荷兰顶住压力以便自由的“窃取”外国技术，直至1907和1912年才分别采用专利法。

两个重要结论：

1。发达国家在其发展的早期阶段用了很长时间来发展其公共机构。从17世纪就出现了对中央银行的需求，但直到1844年，两个世纪以后，才出现第一个真正意义上的中央银行

2。在今天的发达国家，其早期的公共机构发展水平，比今天的发展中国家要低的多。以收入水平为例，1820年英国比今天的印度发展水平略高，但英国没有印度今天所有的大部分基本机构。没有普选、中央银行、所得税、劳动法...