Importsubstitution und Entwicklungspolitik

• Published in: Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 1968-10, Vol.124 (4), p.641-683
• Main Author: HESSE, HELMUT
• Format: Article
• Language: ger
• Subjects: ABHANDLUNGEN
• ISSN: 0044-2550

This study is divided into two parts. In the first is is shown that, in the last twenty years, most of the developing countries carried out import substitution on a very large scale to spur economic development. Import substitution has been encouraged where feasible and has been the major objective of development plans for the agricultural and industrial sector. In the second part, the advantages and disadvantages of this importsubstitution-policy are discussed. There are two groups of arguments. Common to the arguments of the first group in the statement of nearly all governments of these countries, that the supply of foreign exchange has been a principal constraint on the rate of planned economic development. If external imbalance should not be allowed to undermine the basis of all development itself, governments have to place great emphasis on the saving of foreign exchange through import substitution in determining the type of productive activities to be developed. These arguments are valid only, if a) it is possible to show, that it would not be a promising line of development to push exports, b) import substitution would not reduce current export earnings, and c) import substitution has such a high import intensity, that it would be impossible to save foreign exchange, on the whole. These problems are discussed. Import substitution has been carried out in countries without scarcity of foreign exchange, too. This raises the question, whether import substitution may speed up economic development even in these countries more than any other strategy can do. The arguments of the second group may help to give an answer to this question. To find these arguments, the import-substitution-policy is compared with a) the strategy of balanced growth (Nurkse), b) the strategy of unbalanced growth (Hirschman), c) allocating investment resources according to several investment criteria, and d) an allocation of resources according to (dynamic) comparative advantages.