Economic Development: The History of an Idea.

Economic Development: The History of an Idea. By H. W Arndt. Chicago, 111. : University of Chicago Press, 1987. viii + 217. Notes and partial index. $20.95.

Reviewed by Alice H. Amsden

H. W Arndt has provided us with an interesting account of the history of the concept of economic development. Unlike Nigel Harris's The End of the Third World (1986), Arndt's book is more optimistic in its view that economic development is still conceptually alive. Arndt's historiography is -also deeper than Harris's, focusing on the history of an idea rather than on the political economy of the Third World. The book differs from Arndt's earlier work, The Rise and Fall of Economic Growth (1984); the focus is now on poor countries and on how economic growth and economic development may differ.

The chapter entitled "The Prehistory (to 1945)" deals with the origins ofthe economic development concept. The treatment is neither overly scholarly (Arndt relies, for example, on Walt Rostow for a discussion of early world history) nor ovrly "pop" (the …