SEMAINE D'ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L’ANALYSE ECONOMETRIQUE ETC.
1067
[ think this is very important because, since, especially for India
in the last 25 years, western aid policy for underdeveloped countries
has been based on the hypothesis that real national income is pro-
portional to real capital. Nobody has questioned this and we have
spent many billions of dollars in a way which may have been less
efficient than for examples, educating the people. In my opinion, if
we consider all the variables which significantly influence develop:
ment, I would say that capital is less important than other factors,
and if this thesis were to be accepted, we should spend the greatest
part of our help in other directions.
[LEONTIEE
As author of a paper I would like to comment at length on the
interesting questions raised in the course of the subsequent discussion;
as Chairman, I have the responsibility for adjourning this meeting
within a few minutes. Thus. I will make these closing remarks very
brief.
In answering Professor MAHALANOBIS’ query, 1 must explain that
the United Nations figures which I used as a basis for my calcula-
tions include Continental China as they do Soviet Russia among the
so-called centrally planned economies which I had to treat as belon-
ging to the group of industrialized countries.
All my computations were conducted on a total not-per capita
basis. Translated into per capita terms, the discrepancy between the
present growth rates of the underdeveloped and the industrialized
parts of the world would of course appear to be still greater and the
volume of the capital transfer required to eliminate, or at least to
reduce this difference within the next ten years — still larger.
So far as the concept of a take-off period is concerned, I suppose
it might be applied to the entire ten-year time span covered by my
hypothetical computation.
I fully agree with Professor ALLAIS’ emphasis on the importance
nf educational expenditure as a means of accelerating economic
“ y] Leontief - pag. 20
De
