Economic Development and International Responsibility

Hiroshi Kitamura has experienced life in the entire spectrum of countries at different stages of economic development: receiving his higher degrees in Europe and Japan, spending time on economic research in Europe and the USA, teaching in Japan and promoting economic development in the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) in Bangkok. It may therefore be fitting, in honouring him for a long and distinguished career, to analyse the question of when a country should, in a normative sense, take on some appropriate (substantial?) share of responsibility for the world economic system. A similar problem presents itself in peace-keeping. Indeed the parallel between peace-keeping and international economic stability is a close one, both being international public goods that have to be provided in the absence of international government that could use coercion, and both goods that are plagued with ‘free-riders’, i.e. countries that hang back from paying the costs on the grounds that others will do so.