Maestro

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Economic development refers to the combined processes of capital accumulation, rising per capita incomes, rising of skills in the population, adoption of newtechnological styles, and other related social and economic changes.

Per capita GDP is one of the most frequently used measures of Third World progress in economic development. This measurement does notaddress the issue of how the income per capita GDP represents is distributed. However, since capitalists are concerned about the need for a concentration of capital in order to spur investment ratherthan consumption, few capitalists are deeply concerned about any unevenness associated with mounting GDP figures. Rather, they would argue that Third World states will benefit as more wealth isgenerated because eventually it will come back to Third World states.

There are a number of Third World countries that succeeded in their economic development and became a model for Third World economicdevelopment. The Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) are mainly the four tigers of East Asia¬- South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore and other NICs such as Israel, Thailand, Malaysia, andIndonesia. Other successful model highlighted by many theorists of economic development is the Chinese experience and changes that followed in the wake of Mao's death and replacement by DengXiaoping. More emphasis on the Chinese example came after Deng's death and the Asian financial crisis, both in 1997. The experiences of other sizable Third World states are worth mentioning, including India,Vietnam, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, and Egypt. The point of these descriptions is to try to identify patterns ofdevelopment that work, so they may be implemented by others.

No single model applies to all economic development successes, though certain themes happen again, such as trade, concentration of capital,...