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THE IMPORTANCE OF CHOICE: CATFISH MAN OF THE WOODS THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2024

Claudia Williamson Kramer*
Affiliation:
Economics, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Abstract

The importance of economic freedom for economic development can no longer be denied. What is often denied, however, is respect for individuals’ rights and personal choices. The role of individual choice is often dismissed or set aside by the development community. In this essay, I argue that inherent to economic freedom’s economic success is the promotion and acceptance of individual choice. Development theory should include recognition of and respect for personal choices, a theory I call “Catfish Man of the Woods” theory of development.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2024 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA

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Footnotes

*

Department of Finance and Economics, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, claudia-williamson@utc.edu. Competing Interests: The author declares none.

References

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2 Catfish Man of the Woods theory of development is first discussed in Williamson, Claudia R., “Are We Austrian Economists?The Review of Austrian Economics 33, no. 4 (2020): 407–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The current essay expands upon the initial premise of this newly developed theoretical argument.

3 “Herbalist Clarence ‘Catfish’ Gray Dies,” West Virginia Public Broadcasting, March 13, 2002, https://www.wvpublic.org/radio/2020-03-13/march-13-2002-herbalist-clarence-catfish-gray-dies.

4 Catfish: Man of the Woods, directed by Alan Bennett (1974; Whitesburg, KY: Appalshop Films).

5 Interestingly, Catfish’s discoveries and techniques are used extensively in colleges of medicine and nursing and among health care providers to explore alternative methods of healing and cultural assumptions about medicine and health care.

6 “Herbalist Clarence ‘Catfish’ Gray Dies.”

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8 Data are collected from World Development Indicators (2020).

9 1981 is the year data are first available.

10 Economic freedom data are collected from Gwartney, James et al., “Economic Freedom Dataset,” in Economic Freedom of the World: 2020 Annual Report (Calgary: Fraser Institute, 2020)Google Scholar, https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/economic-freedom-of-the-world-2020-annual-report.

11 The five categories are: (1) Size of government, which measures the share of government’s expenditures, level of taxes, and the degree of state ownership in an economy. (2) Legal structure and security of property rights, which measures the quality and effectiveness of a country’s legal system, such as how independent its judiciary is, the impartiality of courts, military interference with the legal system, and how well government protects private property rights. (3) Access to sound money, which measures the extent of inflation and the freedom to own foreign currency domestically and abroad. (4) Freedom to trade internationally, which measures the extent of tariff and nontariff trade barriers, international capital market controls, exchange rate regulation, or other regulation on the ability to trade internationally. (5) Credit, labor, and business regulation, which covers government control of credit markets; minimum wages; price controls; time to start a new business; the number of licenses, permits, and other bureaucratic approvals involved with starting and operating a business; and restrictions on hiring and firing workers.

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26 See Gwartney et al., “Economic Freedom Dataset.”

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