Abstract
Following the remarkable success of the first-tier East Asian countries (Hong-Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan) in the 1970s, and the second-tier South-East Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines) in the 1980s, the export-led growth paradigm has received special attention, especially if compared to the large malfunction of import substitution policies in many countries of Africa and Latin America. This paper recapitulates some of the trade and growth theories in the history of development economics from the eighteenth century to the close of the twentieth century.