North American Patterns of Growth and Development: The Continental Context

David Robinson is a professor of Economics at Laurentian University.

All the signs suggest that this posthumous publication by one of
Canada’s best-known economic historians will be a major event. As a
colleague of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, Easterbrook was near the
centre of a rich and original Canadian school of political and economic
thinking. From early in his career he emphasized the importance of
entrepreneurship and uncertainty, themes that have moved to the
forefront of modern analytical economics. In this book, which absorbed
much of his energy from his retirement in 1977 to his death in 1985,
Easterbrook presents a synthetic overview of the process of economic
development for all of North America.

He examines the development of Canada, the United States, and Mexico in
terms of what he calls the “uncertainty/response syndrome,” in which
each stage of growth and social change is conditioned by the prevailing
riskiness of individual enterprise. State action both influences and is
influenced by “macro-uncertainty.”

The basic concept is potentially very powerful, but the book does
little more than apply the jargon of “uncertainty/response” to the
sweep of North American development. Although the scope is grand, the
book lacks vigor and rigor. There are few references after 1976, and
none after 1980. Editor Ian Parker has done yeoman’s service in making
the manuscript presentable, and his introduction provides a neat summary
of the author’s life and thought. But in the end both Easterbrook’s
idea and the school it arises from are still waiting for someone to do
them justice.