Commodities in Economics: Loving or Hating Complexity

M. Shahid Alam ()
Additional contact information
M. Shahid Alam: Department of Economics, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

Economic Thought, 2016, vol. 5, issue 1, 1

Abstract: A review of economic thought since the sixteenth century reveals two streams of economic discourse, dirigisme and laissez-faire. Starting with the mercantilists, dirigiste approaches to economics embrace the real-world complexity of commodities that often differ greatly in attributes that are growth- and rent- augmenting. Most importantly, this means that free trade is likely to be polarising: it concentrates growth- and rent-augmenting commodities in countries that already enjoy a head start in these commodities. Advanced countries, therefore, support laissez-faire, while lagging countries tend to support dirigisme. In order to rationalise their laissez-faire stance, advanced countries began developing a new economic discourse that strips commodities of their complexity. The foundations for this ideological reconstruction of economics were first laid by Adam Smith; this process eventually reached its climax with the neoclassical economists who stripped commodities down to one attribute: their capital intensity. In opposition to this laissez-faire economics, other writers, supportive of the interests of lagging countries, brought complexity back into their economic discourse; they argued that lagging countries had a fighting chance of catching up to advanced economies only by indigenising a growing array of growth- and rent-augmenting commodities.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://et.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/com ... r-hating-complexity/ (text/html)
http://et.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-ET-5-1-Alam.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wea:econth:v:5:y:2016:i:1:p:1

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Thought is currently edited by Kyla Rushman

More articles in Economic Thought from World Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake McMurchie ().