A Modern Guide to Uneven Economic Development (new edited book)

Along with Erik Reinert, I’ve published A Modern Guide to Uneven Economic Development. In contrast to mainstream approaches to economics, this Guide addresses the complex reality of economic development as an inherently uneven process, exploring the ways of theorizing and empirically exploring the mechanisms with which the unevenness manifests itself. It covers a wide array of issues influencing wealth and poverty, technological innovation, ecology and sustainability, financialization, population, gender, and geography, considering the dynamics of cumulative causations created by the interplay between these factors.

Table of Contents

Introduction: uneven development ‒ addressing causes versus
treating symptoms 1
Erik S. Reinert and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven

PART I NATURE-MADE VERSUS POLICY-MADE
SOURCES OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT
1 Uneven economic development: identifying the blind
spots of mainstream economics 19
Erik S. Reinert
2 Geography, uneven development and population density:
attempting a non-ethnocentric approach to development 46
Erik S. Reinert, Salah Chafik and Xuan Zhao
3 Redirecting growth: inclusive, sustainable and innovation-led 71
Mariana Mazzucato and Carlota Perez

PART II ASSUMPTIONS, ABSTRACTIONS AND
APPROACHES TO UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT
4 Altered states: Cartesian and Ricardian dreams 108
Erik S. Reinert, Monica Di Fiore, Andrea Saltelli and
Jerome R. Ravetz
5 Gender and uneven development 135
Lyn Ossome
6 Dependency theory: strengths, weaknesses, and its
relevance today 147
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven
7 The need to centre imperialism in studies of uneven development 171
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven
8 Imperialism: a note on the unequal treaties of modern
China and Japan 186
Xuan Zhao

PART III UNDERSTANDING MECHANISMS THAT
CREATE AND PREVENT INEQUALITY
9 Physiocracy, guillotines and antisemitism? Did economics
emulate the wrong Enlightenment? 200
Andrea Saltelli and Erik S. Reinert
10 Technological retrogression and persistent poverty 218
Sylvi B. Endresen

PART IV WHEN NATIONS AND SYSTEMS DECLINE
AND COLLAPSE
11 When nations collapse: a note on Jacob Bielfeld’s ‘On the
Decline of States’ (1760) 238
Erik S. Reinert
12 Free trade with the former COMECON countries as
unequal exchange 255
Marta Kuc-Czarnecka, Andrea Saltelli, Magdalena Olczyk
and Erik S. Reinert
13 Escaping the poverty trap in China: the co-evolution of
diversity in property and economic development 277
Ting Xu
14 Recent experiences of successful economic policies: the
case of Uzbekistan 304
Vladimir Popov

PART V FINANCE VERSUS THE REAL ECONOMY
15 Uneven development, financialised capitalism and subordination 332
Bruno Bonizzi, Annina Kaltenbrunner and Jeff Powell
16 Unequal growth and the single currency: the fiscal policy paradox 348
Jan Kregel

PART VI ECOLOGY
17 Identifying ecologically unequal exchange in the
world-system: implications for development 367
Alf Hornborg
Conclusion: what are the important lessons from history? 389
Erik S. Reinert and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven

Index 406