重新定义比较优势:兼论发展经济学研究的转向

Redefining Comparative Advantage:The Turn of the Development Economics Research

发展中国家要实现较快发展,培育和利用发展自身要素比较优势至关重要。但对比较优势的来源或类型,传统研究更侧重资本、劳动力、自然资源等生产要素禀赋,使得强调资本原始积累、推进重化工业发展战略、发展出口导向型经济等成为不同时期主流发展经济学家的政策主张。然而,大量发展中国家在传统要素禀赋比较优势理论指导下,并没有实现经济持续增长,反而,以日本、新加坡、韩国、中国等为代表的国家通过构建新的动态比较优势而实现了经济腾飞。这种新的动态比较优势主要源于斯蒂格利茨等人强调的学习和学习能力。对比较优势来源或类型的认知,影响发展中国家发展战略和发展政策的制定以及发展路径的选择,从而对实现经济持续高速增长具有决定性影响。在探讨发展经济学研究局限的基础上,就学习比较优势对发展中国家经济增长的作用进行了验证,进而讨论学习比较优势与中国经济增长的关系,得出学习能力积累和学习比较优势构建对发展中国家的经济增长有着显著影响,这为理解和认识发展中国家经济增长的源泉提供了新视角,有助于解决发展经济学发展中所面临的发展中国家实践的多样性与理论的一般性之间可能存在的矛盾。

To achieve rapid development,it is crucial for developing countries to cultivate and exploit the comparative advantages of their own factors.As to the sources or types of comparative advantage,traditional studies focus on production factor endowments like capital,labour and natural resources.As a result,primitive capital accumulation,heavy industrial development strategies and export-oriented economies became the policy propositions of mainstream development economists at different times.However,many developing countries,guided by the traditional theory of factor endowment advantage,have failed to achieve sustainable economic growth.On the contrary,countries like Japan,Singapore,Republic of Korea and China have achieved tremendous economic growth by building new dynamic comparative advantage,which mainly stems from learning and learning competence emphasized by Stiglitz,et al.The cognition of the sources or types of comparative advantage affects the development strategy formulation,policy making and development path choice,and thus has a decisive impact on sustained and rapid economic growth.Based on the exploration of the limitations of the development economics research,the present paper verifies the role of learning comparative advantage on economic growth in developing countries,and then discusses the relationship between learning comparative advantages and China's economic growth,concluding that the accumulation of learning competence and the construction of comparative advantage have a significant impact on the economic growth of developing countries.It provides a new perspective for understanding the sources of economic growth in developing countries and helps to resolve the possible contradiction between the diversity of practice and the generality of theory in developing countries during the evolution of development economics.