ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the nature of the development process and in particular on its main feature, that of being an unbalanced growth phenomenon. The notion of unbalanced growth is associated especially with the work of Albert Hirschman in The Strategy of Economic Development of 1958. 1 Based on the six years Hirschman spent in Colombia, the book lays out a really seminal view of development as a chain of disequilibria opening a research agenda that has been largely set aside today. The problem of development in the world economy of the twenty-first century is certainly different from that observed by Hirschman in the 1950s. Nevertheless induced investment, complementarities and linkages effects are key aspects of today’s development patterns. That is why the question of unbalanced growth reaches into the fundamental problems lying ahead for emerging economies.
