Yeah – that was my first thought too. Or something similar, an impressively muscled swimming hulk striding round the World Bank. Still even at 2km that’s an impressive undertaking.

Definitely agree with Duncan’s point: Lin’s arguments make sense but it does seem to assume a functioning and favourable institutional environment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8213539.stm

Duncan: Thanks for clarifying Ken – I previously raised this with the World Bank press office and never got a reply. Still, swimming 2km sounds pretty good to me!

I haven’t read the Lin paper in detail, but I think you are right in criticizing his optimistic view on bureaucracy. However, I also think he is too optimistic on national leaders – I think there is good reason to believe that many leaders actually know quite a lot about how to facilitate growth, but they simply don’t want to.

Keep in mind that, in most industrialized countries today, different versions of ‘crony capitalism’ was an important part of the development experience. Quite consistent witht eh views expressed in the latest book from Douglass North, Violence and Social Orders.

Keeping society stable through periods with rapid growth is probably not very easy, and perhaps the most daunting task here. A suppose leaders would choose stability to growth, rather than the other way around…

The fact that his advice on policy often have significant overlapping with that of Ha-Joon Chang, tells is that so called ‘orthodox’ economic thinking is significantly less certain than has previously been common knowledge. This is, of course, welcomed!

Heterodox economists are best known for their non-neo-classical approaches to research, not by political leanings.