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Chapter 9 concludes the book by dispelling the myths listed in Chapter 1, and ultimately making development economics face up squarely to the realities of economic development. It summarizes the debate raised in earlier chapters regarding the function of markets and the idea of market failure as evolutionary failure. Corporations are viewed as important for economic development, as market expanders into new areas. However, markets and corporations are not enough for economic development and require economically discriminating government to ignite and sustain economic development. The chapter further discusses the role of politics, economic inequality and democracy in economic development. The chapter ends by putting into perspective the General Theory of Economic Development in contemporary economic thought, and explains why it is indeed a general theory as well as the beginning of a capitalist manifesto.

This chapter discusses the important role of the corporate firm in capitalism and in economic development. Firms are seen as complementing markets, as a market expander by helping to overcome transaction costs in the overall economy by their command-and-control structures. The chapter also discusses how corporate growth incentives can be secured without necessarily encouraging monopoly power.

This chapter provides a critique of institution-free mainstream economics, including the important conditions such as private property rights and economic freedom. Despite the merits of private property rights and economic freedom for the efficient functioning of the market economy, the author provides reasons why these may not be sufficient for understanding economic development. The chapter also finds fault in the so-called Washington Consensus but looks favourably at New Institutional Economics as a new hope when looking at economic development. The purpose of this chapter is to show deficiencies in existing knowledge and tools for understanding economic development, and hence the need for a new approach

This chapter discusses the condensed (or rapid) Eastern economic development experiences of Japan, Korea and China. It attempts to understand the common features of industrial policy of the three countries during their economic take-off, as well as the common features of policy failure that have contributed to growth stagnation in Japan and Korea in recent years. Essentially, during economic take-off, economic policy has been discriminatory, while economic egalitarianism has been responsible for the recent years of economic decline. This chapter also argues for the important role of corporations in the economic take-off of Japan and Korea as well as China.

Chapter 7 formalizes the new General Theory of Economic Development based on the concept of economic discrimination (ED). This is the central theory of the book in which the author argues that the ‘Holy Trinity’ of economic development _ consisting of markets, corporations and the government _ work together with ED as the most important institutions for economic development. The author also claims that the capitalist economy should in fact be called the corporate economy. ED by markets, corporations and government is the key to economic development. Implications of the General Theory of Economic Development are also discussed.

Chapter 2 provides a description of economic development and takes a closer look at the complexity nature of development, and deliberates on implications about what the necessary ingredients for the development of a General Theory of Economic Development would be. More specifically, it compares complexity economics with mainstream economics and discusses the emergence failure of evolution and the synergy market failure of emergent development, which is referred to as market failure. The chapter addresses in depth the idea of externalities in economic analysis, which are viewed as ubiquitous, and also highlights some important differences between markets and organizations.

Chapter 8 analyses the role of politics and political ideology in economic development. Politics is viewed as an important deciding constraint on economic development. This chapter provides a positive theory of political economy that is used to distinguish countries according to a discriminatory_egalitarian and totalitarian_democracy matrix. The chapter concludes by providing some comments on inequality.

Chapter 4 overviews the so-called extended (or gradual) Western economic development experiences in Britain and Europe, and later in the United States since the Industrial Revolution. It also argues that the limited liability joint-stock company or corporation was critical in the rise of Western economic development.