Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Economic Research Institute Study paper

Publisher

Utah State University

Publication Date

10-1-1987

Rights

Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact the Institutional Repository Librarian at digitalcommons@usu.edu.

First Page

1

Last Page

19

Abstract

The economic rationale of import-substituting strategy of development pursued by the majority of the developing countries has long been questioned. Apart from the familiar argument that tariff tends to discourage exports and hence, can be viewed as an export tax, there is the immiserization argument proposed by Professor Johnson. Within the framework of a two-factor two-commodity model, Johnson has shown that a small tariff-imposing country may suffer a welfare loss from an increase in the stock of resources or technological change if the growth is biased in favor of the importable sector so that it tends to magnify the distortion in production caused by the tariff. The purpose of this paper is to examine the possibility of Johnson-type immiserizing growth for the developing countries characterized by massive unemployment.

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