(02-28-2017, 05:38 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:Yes, it is growth. Today growth can be directly assessed using GDP, one doesn't not need to assess leading sectors. You still can and will get similar results. When M&T did their work GDP data only went back to the 19th century for some powers and much later for others. To use economics in their model they had to work with proxies for trends in GDP growth like leading sectors.Quote:According to M&T what sets up a country for future leader role is beginning a new K-wave.
So, I have gone back through the Google Books version of LSWP, and I have found no reference to this. I have found numerous references to the idea that what sets up a country for a future leader role is the growth captured by particular countries during a k-wave, as said growth is rarely evenly distributed.
Here we have, on pages 70-71:
Quote:A central premise of the leading sector concept is that growth occurs unevenly and at different rates within (national and global) economies. Some types of activities or sectors expand steadily, but very slowly. There will always be some sectors that are stagnating due to lags in technological change or, more simply, changes in demand. Significant rates of economic growth, however, are initially traceable to a few activities that are so transformed by innovation that they experience abrupt and rapid expansion. These sectors lead their respective economies as vanguards of high growth. New ways of doing things are introduced. High profits are realized to the extent that leading sectors are monopolized by a few firms or a single economy; money for investment becomes less scarce; new industries and jobs are created; transportation costs may be reduced; and new markets are created. In sum, leading sectors act as the spark plugs of economic growth.
The key concept, as you can see, is growth. Growth is what leads to national power, not bragging rights.
We also have the example of the Netherlands capturing the economic growth from Spain's silver flows from the New World.
We have the example of the British sugar boom in the Caribbean, hotly contested by the French, emerging as a result of the disruption of the Brazilian sugar supplies due to Dutch-Portuguese fighting.
We also have the mention, on page 97, that it was in fact Britain that had the initial lead in both steel and chemicals, before being displaced by the US (remember that the Bessemer process was invented in Britain) in the last quarter of the 19th century. Germany was strongly competitive in many of these fields during the late 19th-early 20th century as well.
M&T linked the various waves to major industries connected with rising hegemons. For example they have a pepper leading sector dominanted by the Portuguese as evidence for the rising wealth of Portugal that allowed them to become a leader. They did not consider the contemporaneous textile leading sector in Hondeshoote or the American gold leading sector for Spain as key. Given the industries they deem important I looked at the first leading sector they assigned to a future hegemon and noted the span of time between when that sector took off and when the future MD phase began which would make them leader. We are trying to make forecasts, We cannot wait until the end of the leading sector development (i.e, when it become mature) because the MD phase will have already begun by then.
You point out that although Britain invented the Bessmer process, the US later overtook them. This is quite true. The same story is told by GDP, Britain was passed by the US in the 1880's. Yet it was 30 years later that the next MD phase started that would make American the leader. China is where America was in the 1880's, with its position in the IT industries on the verge of passing the US, and its GDP having very recently moved past ours in PPP terms. And you would expect the MD phase to then begin around 30 years from now. You are arguing for a start in the cycle-equivalent of the 1890's which I see as a couple of decades early.