ROSTOW (W.W.)
The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto.
Rostow’s best-known work The Stages of Economic Growth “was a block-buster. It stepped on many toes, assuring his reputation as the one of the most controversial economists of the last half of the 20th century. At the time, his model clashed with that of Harrod–Domar. They modelled steady-state (equilibrium) growth, with no historical context, and focused on two variables: saving and output–capital ratios. Naturally, an economic historian would ask how an economy got there in the first place. Rostow thought he saw a pattern in how countries got there. Development proceeded through five stages: traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off to sustained growth, drive to maturity and age of high mass consumption. His critics saw these stages as ‘empty boxes’, not empirically verifiable and devoid of predictive power. Most were especially critical of the take-off stage. He had not demonstrated empirically the necessity of a significant rise in the saving and output–capital ratios. His critics were not convinced about his dating of stages for the seven countries he studied. Besides, he had not heeded Marshall’s dictum, Natura non facit saltum – nature does nothing in jumps. Controversy swirled over his discontinuous, disequilibrium approach to economic growth.
His work was so upsetting to many of the world’s most distinguished researchers in the field of development that the International Economic Association convened a conference in Konstanz in 1960 devoted exclusively to Rostow’s work. This exclusivity was a first for the Association, and is indicative of the importance placed on his work. If Rostow did not convince his critics, or they him, the conference gave him worldwide notoriety, and his ideas were embraced by many economists in developing countries” (New Palgrave).
