Economic Development as an Empirical Concept

David W. Rasmussen
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David W. Rasmussen: Florida State University

The Review of Regional Studies, 1990, vol. 20, issue 1, 56-61

Abstract: Economic development must be the most abused term in social science. It is used to mean many different things; it describes both a state and a myriad of processes. Development is a state to be achieved since developed countries have a per capita income in excess of $1500; lesser developed counties do not. Development is also widely viewed as a process. Many scholars have emphasized that development is distinct from the concept of growth, but careful usage of these terms is not common practice. Flammang (1979) reports nine different ways of distinguishing between growth and development, one of which is not bothering to define either term. In this paper we explore a positive definition of development that has empirical content. Obviously we cannot measure development per se since it involves a host of institutional changes, demographic shifts, technical change, and changes in international economic relations that are too varied and heterogeneous to measure in a simple way. But we can observe whether development has occurred by investigating long term changes in aggregate measures of economic performance and the distribution of income.

Date: 1990
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