As in history, the decade of the 1920s was a period of tremendous economic modification. The end of the First World War beckoned the start of a new era and a period that came to be known as “roaring .”During this time, the retreat from progressivism was evident in how the business world gained top priority over social issues. Government policy intended to encourage business growth and nurture the American economy. New and improved methods, procedures, and technology showed efficiency and output in the industry. Predominant in the progress of industry and the economy and society and culture was the automobile. However, not all groups were synergic in the twenties’ success on the opposite end of the array. Even unions did not share the same quantity of progress proportionally that corporations did. Farmers also failed in a similar way that businesses did. During this time, business flourished, real wages rose, and unemployment decreased. The sum of these factors is that the twenties were an economic dirge for some, but more than anything else, was a business person’s paradise.
One of the most critical factors in industry success was government policy. The book entitled, Collective Institutions in Industrialized Nations by Samuel E. Enajero illustrates historical collective social institutions that are catalysts for modern-day economic successes. The lack of such historical institutions contributes to economic failures in some nations, primarily nations in sub-Saharan Africa. The retreat from progressivism allowed business interests to come to the forefront in public concern. The hands-off, laissez-faire attitude of the government was a stark contrast to the previous decades where business became hampered by regulations and standards. Economic development is a relatively new idea that arose during the early twentieth century. Many theorists attempted to define economic development and to differentiate it from the concept of economic growth. Some economists said that economic development and economic growth are two different concepts and cannot be equated as they stressed. As they say, economic development is a more complicated and dynamic process than economic growth, but both are no doubt interrelated.
On the other hand, economic development is a critical component that drives economic growth in one’s economy. This creates high-wage jobs and facilitates an improved quality of life. The different teams from business development in every country work to attract and retain jobs for people in their region. While economic developers often fall under the radar, creating and sustaining jobs for a region is critical to a thriving economy and community.
Below are the top six reasons why economic development plays a critical role in any country’s economy:
1. Job Creation. Economic innovators provide critical assistance and information to companies that create jobs in one’s economy. They help connect new-to-market and existing companies with the resources and partners they need to expand.
2. Industry Diversification. The center of economic development works to diversify the economy, reducing a country’s vulnerability to a single industry. While tourism plays a vital role in creating jobs in a country, economic development efforts help grow industries outside of tourism, including Innovative Technologies and Digital Media, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Aviation, Aerospace & Defense, Advanced Manufacturing, and Business Services.
3. Business Retention and Expansion. A large percentage of jobs are created in a country’s economy by existing companies expanding their operations. There is a need for a country’s region’s business retention and expansion to be executed through site visitation to assist its operational needs.
4. Economy Fortification. The economic development helps protect the local economy from economic downturns by attracting and expanding the country’s major employers.
5. Increase Tax Revenue. The increased presence of companies in a country translates to increased tax revenue for community projects and local infrastructure.
6. Improved Quality of Life. Better infrastructure and more jobs improve a country’s economy and raise the standard of living for its residents.
As pointed out by a particular professor, all attitudes, habits of mind, patterns of behavior are born out of chiefly historical institutional modes of living. These modes of living in most under-developed countries have had little direct connection with economic development in the past. If rapid economic development is to become the main objective of these societies, their attitudes and habits of mind must change correspondingly.
Habit-Changing Public Policies
By
Samuel E. Enajero
“Humans are incredibly easy to indoctrinate” – E.O. Wilson
This blog contributor made some salient points. First, the author separated economic development from economic growth, a dichotomy that is not explicit in the economic literature. Economic development and economic growth are often synonymously analyzed. Thus, in many economic discussions, variables needed for economic growth are equally recommended for economic development. These include the Solow model and its variants of capital accumulations, economic liberalization tied to international trade, Forex, asset management, and many more models in macroeconomic operations.
Whereas, evolutionary economics separates growth economic domain from development domain. Economic development occurs in the generic domain through institutional changes. Economic growth occurs in the operant domain.by manipulating operational variables such as balance of payments, forex, trade, currencies, fiscal and monetary policies, and the likes. Models based on growth variables suggest that under-developed countries of sub-Saharan Africa could grow out of under-development. For more than 60 years, this has not materialized.
Secondly, and very significant to this website, the blogger correctly asserts that under-developed countries have other yearnings other than development. The author concluded that “If rapid economic development is to become the main objective of these societies, their attitudes and habits of mind must change correspondingly.” That is the tenet of evolutionary economics. Habits are institutions that originate from beliefs, and development is a consequence of changes in habits. In contrast, mainstream economists, and their growth/development models, insinuate habits are biologically shared practices and completely unchangeable.
History would reveal that during European monarchies––before the advent of contemporary economic theories––patterned behaviors and decorum were the concerns of European leaders. The pressures to alter the habits of the wage earners, commoners and peasants led to a series of European revolutions. Historical Japan was more ruthless––an entire family could be executed if a member displayed behaviors that brought shame to the Emperor (King, 1970; Enajero, 2015). That could be said about China’s cultural revolution of the 1940s and 1950s. Although, an autocratic leader initiated the Chinese cultural changes, it was a precursor to modern China’s economic prosperity.
The economic success stories of Singapore and the Asian Tigers (countries at the same economic status as sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s) could partly be credited to geopolitics that required aggressive public and private partnership capital mobility from the West to the region. The successes were nonetheless preceded by direct domestic interventions in people’s habits. The Singapore experience was simple and people-based. “My primary preoccupation was to give every citizen a stake in the country. I wanted a home-owning society,” noted Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore (Yew, 2000, p. 95). What are the major habit-changing contents of peoples’ utility functions? They are housing, education, public health and transportation. The State manipulated the size and quality of these items in people’s preferences, and effectively changed the habits and behaviors of the Singaporeans. One could say that’s socialism, but it worked, and it’s no different from the practices in Western Europe, Canada and the United States.
While socio-biologists, psychologists and marketers agree that “humans are incredibly easy to indoctrinate,” Neoclassical economists assume habits and tastes are pre-programmed during pregnancies. Along with this neoclassical school of thought, sub-Saharan African nations made no attempts since gaining independence to influence people’s habits and norms. Nigerian authorities, for example, are obsessed with macroeconomic policy based on “oil-for-forex,” leaving the general populace clinging to 5,000 or more years of values and habits. .
References
Enajero, S. (2018). “Interdependence Costs, Collectivism, and the Economic Rationale for Democracy.” Journal of Public Administration and Development Alternatives.” Vol. 3, No.1, pp. 1-11.
King, F. (1970). Japan and Its People. New York, NY: Viking Press, Inc.
Wilson, E. (1980). Sociology Abridged. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Yew, L. (2000). From Third World to First: The Singapore Story. 1965-2000, New York, NY: Harper Collins.
Habit-Changing Public Policies
By
Samuel Enajero
“Humans are incredibly easy to indoctrinate” – E.O. Wilson
This blog contributor made some salient points. First, the author separated economic development from economic growth, a dichotomy that is not explicit in the economic literature. Economic development and economic growth are often synonymously analyzed. Thus, in many economic discussions, variables needed for economic growth are equally recommended for economic development. These include the Solow model and its variants of capital accumulations, economic liberalization tied to international trade, Forex, asset management, and many more models in macroeconomic operations.
Whereas, evolutionary economics separates growth economic domain from development domain. Economic development occurs in the generic domain through institutional changes. Economic growth occurs in the operant domain.by manipulating operational variables such as balance of payments, forex, trade, currencies, fiscal and monetary policies, and the likes. Models based on growth variables suggest that under-developed countries of sub-Saharan Africa could grow out of under-development. For more than 60 years, this has not materialized.
Secondly, and very significant to this website, the blogger correctly asserts that under-developed countries have other yearnings other than development. The author concluded that “If rapid economic development is to become the main objective of these societies, their attitudes and habits of mind must change correspondingly.” That is the tenet of evolutionary economics. Habits are institutions that originate from beliefs, and development is a consequence of changes in habits. In contrast, mainstream economists, and their growth/development models, insinuate habits are biologically shared practices and completely unchangeable.
History would reveal that during European monarchies––before the advent of contemporary economic theories––patterned behaviors and decorum were the concerns of European leaders. The pressures to alter the habits of the wage earners, commoners and peasants led to a series of European revolutions. Historical Japan was more ruthless––an entire family could be executed if a member displayed behaviors that brought shame to the Emperor (King, 1970; Enajero, 2015). That could be said about China’s cultural revolution of the 1940s and 1950s. Although, an autocratic leader initiated the Chinese cultural changes, it was a precursor to modern China’s economic prosperity.
The economic success stories of Singapore and the Asian Tigers (countries at the same economic status as sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s) could partly be credited to geopolitics that required aggressive public and private partnership capital mobility from the West to the region. The successes were nonetheless preceded by direct domestic interventions in people’s habits. The Singapore experience was simple and people-based. “My primary preoccupation was to give every citizen a stake in the country. I wanted a home-owning society,” noted Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore (Yew, 2000, p. 95). What are the major habit-changing contents of peoples’ utility functions? They are housing, education, public health and transportation. The State manipulated the size and quality of these items in people’s preferences, and effectively changed the habits and behaviors of the Singaporeans. One could say that’s socialism, but it worked, and it’s no different from the practices in Western Europe, Canada and the United States.
While socio-biologists, psychologists and marketers agree that “humans are incredibly easy to indoctrinate,” Neoclassical economists assume habits and values are pre-programmed during pregnancies. Along with this neoclassical school of thought, sub-Saharan African nations made no attempts since gaining independence to influence people’s habits and norms. Nigerian authorities, for example, are obsessed with macroeconomic policy based on “oil-for-forex,” leaving the general populace clinging to 5,000 or more years of values and habits. .
References
Enajero, S. (2018). “Interdependence Costs, Collectivism, and the Economic Rationale for Democracy.” Journal of Public Administration and Development Alternatives.” Vol. 3, No.1, pp. 1-11.
King, F. (1970). Japan and Its People. New York, NY: Viking Press, Inc.
Wilson, E. (1980). Sociology Abridged. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Yew, L. (2000). From Third World to First: The Singapore Story. 1965-2000, New York, NY: Harper Collins.
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I’d гeally love to be a part of community where I can get feed-back from other experienced indіviduals that share the same interest.
If you have any suggestions, ⲣlease let me know.
Many thаnks!
Hello Webber, thanks for your comment and inquiry. There is a discussion forum on the Blog Page. Scroll down and you will find two topics posted there for a while now. The first topic titled, “Was the Economic Man Born or Made?” The second topic is titled, “Institutions and Poverty.” You can respond to these topics or post yours. There are two spaces open. Please check the BLOG page. Sorry for the delay in responding. I have been checking to read some comments, and I will be happy to see some questions or comments for discussions. Thank you. Samuel