ECONOMIC GROWTH CENTER

                        YALE UNIVERSITY

                        P.O. Box 208269
                      27 Hillhouse Avenue
                    New Haven, CT 06520-8269


                CENTER DISCUSSION PAPER NO.  783



                     AS THE CENTURY TURNS:
        ANALYTICS, EMPIRICS AND POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT


                       T.  N.  Srinivasan

                        Yale University




                         December 1997





Note:  Center Discussion Papers are preliminary materials circulated to
       stimulate discussions and critical comments. This paper was written
       while Professor Srinivasan was a Visiting Scholar at the Center of
       Visiting Scholar at the Center of Economic Development and Policy
       Reform (CEDPR) at Stanford University.

       Research for this paper was supported by a grant from The Ford
       Foundation, No. 950-1341 and CEDPR.

       For their valuable comments on an earlier version, I thank Anne Krueger,
       Wan-Wen Chu and the participants of the Conference in memory of John C.
       Fei, "The Economics and Political Economy of Development at the Turn of
       the Century," Taipei, Taiwan, August 1-2, 1997.


                                                    December 1997


                      As the Century Turns:
         Analytics, Empirics and Politics of Development
                         T. N. Srinivasan


                             Abstract


     The paper celebrates John Fei's life and contributions to economics by
viewing them in the context of recent theoretical and empirical literature on
the economics and politics of growth.  It summarizes the lessons from the
literature and development experience since the end of the second world war
on the roles of the state, markets and other institutions in the development
process.  It highlights a major lesson, on which there is substantial agreement
if not a consensus, on the importance of openness to foreign trade,
technologies and capital flows to growth and on the importance of participatory
democracy for political sustainability of growth-promoting policies.



Keywords: Economic Development, Economic Growth, Openness and Growth,
Foreign Trade and Growth, Technological Diffusion and Spillover, East
Asian Economies, Political Economy, Authoritarianism and Development,
Democracy and Development

JEL Codes:  040, 041, F43, 038