HKS Authors

See citation below for complete author information.

Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy

Abstract

In the presence of uncertainty about what a country can be good at producing, there can be great social value to discovering costs of domestic activities because such discoveries can be easily imitated. We develop a general-equilibrium framework for a small open economy to clarify the analytical and normative issues. We highlight two failures of the laissez-faire outcome: there is too little investment and entrepreneurship ex ante, and too much production diversification ex post. Optimal policy consists of counteracting these distortions: to encourage investments in the modern sector ex ante, but to rationalize production ex post. We provide some informal evidence on the building blocks of our model.

Citation

Rodrik, Dani, and Ricardo Hausmann. “Economic Development as Self-Discovery.” KSG Faculty Research Working Papers Series RWP02-023, March 2002.