Erik Reinert

The book presents an unorthodox view on economic development and makes quite a few bold statement regarding ‘erroneous ways of mainstream economics’. The author argues that the famous Paul Samuelson’s answer to the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam to "name me one proposition in all of the social sciences which is both true and non-trivial" is wrong. Samuelson’s response is comparative advantage. "That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that it is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them." According to Reinhart this is false and therefore, countries, especially underdeveloped ones may become poorer as a result of opening to the world. Moreover, he insists on several occasions that Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson Model states that under free trade all incomes will be the same across the globe, while there is not such a claim in the model – convergence doesn’t mean equalization. The book has a lot of similar mis-interpretations of mainstream economics. In all, I’ll recommend it for readers who want to see an alternative view but they should have an adequate background to know how to argue with the author.… (meer)