Imperialism and global inequality: A critical analysis

Abstract

Abstract. The article intends to analyse economic changes between advance and less-developed countries and the issues of catching up. Our approach would be to analyse the evolution of developing countries (less-developed) in the world economy in a historical perspective. The important question for 21st century is whether the regions in Asia, Africa and Latin America would be able to catch or not? To answer this we need an understanding of both economics and history, which seems to be critical for a fuller picture on this issue. There have been on-going discussions about a sharp contrast in the international distribution of wealth between the rich (industrialised) and poor (primary producing) countries and it has been emphasised that the benefit of technical progress in the advanced economies would trickle down to the poor countries. The study finds that during the last three decades, there have been huge economic changes taking place globally and structural changes and patterns of trade have also taken place both in advance and developing countries. However, some developing countries have achieved faster growth rates than the advanced economies, particularly China, India, Indonesia and Turkey. However, they constitute a small numbers among the developing countries, but accounts large number of its population. The study concludes that most poor countries have not been able to converge, while largely the two largest ones, namely China and India have experienced rapid growth rates and economic changes in recent decades.

Keywords. Global inequality, Catching-up, International trade.

JEL. P45, O47.