TITLE : ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF A SMALL PLANET.*

This book was originally intended to be no more than a short, simplified version of the senior author's textbook, Economic Development: Problems, Principles and Policies. However, the character of the present volume has changed substantially in the course of preparation.

The metamorphosis began as we adjusted the text to a less specialized audience than that of the earlier book. Deciding to deal more with concrete policy and less with the niceties of economic theory, we found ourselves drawn into a global approach. We could not propose viable development programs and policies without consideration of the interactions among events and trends in advanced and underdeveloped countries, and without analysis of much needed changes in the economies of advanced countries. In order to provide a more balanced picture we have also included some coverage of socialist experience.

Warnings of an impending environmental crisis began to swing the book's focus around from a somewhat simplistic acceptance of growth as a vehicle for development to contemplation of the startling idea that continued growth at the global level might be both impossible and undesirable. The increasing attention paid to the "quality of life" and to the physical environment added new dimensions to the preparation of development programs. Taken together, environmental and physical limitations gave new credence to suggestions emanating from the Third World that Western style industrialization might not be a good thing for traditional societies living harmoniously and independently within the limitations of their own physical environments. Even in countries where incomes are unacceptably low there has been a search for a better "style" of development.

Meanwhile, as we rewrote, the emerging failure of Third World development efforts was forcing economists to put content into a new concept of development (embodied in the "basic needs" and "unified" approaches) within which poverty is attacked directly.

The energy and food crises gave the book-and its potential readers-a final strong push towards recognition of the global nature of the development problem. The 1973-76 recession revealed the inefficiencies of the economies of advanced and Third World economies alike, and their vulnerability to each other's economic fluctuations. Thus, world events and our own ideas converged, enabling us to offer the book in its present form.