Exports of developing countries

de Oleh Havrylyshyn

In the early years of international concern over the development of poor countries, the role of international trade was hotly debated. On one side were those such as Myint, Viner, and Chenery, who advocated a course of exports based on comparative advantage, beginning largely with primary goods and moving to simple manufactures as industrialization progressed. Others such as Nurkse, Prebisch, and Singer took a more pessimistic view of trade; they feared an inevitable long-term relative decline in the markets of primary goods and, as a consequence, a worsening of the economies that were dependent on those exports. Prebisch in particular offered proposals for avoiding this dependency trap, including special preferences in Northern markets for Southern exports, infant-industry policies to stimulate domestic manufacturing through import substitution, and the formation of customs unions among developing countries to lower the costs of infant-industry protection by increasing market size.