This made input-output tables, rather than aggregate demand, Hirschman’s policy framework of choice. Since he was unconvinced that most developing countries had the capabilities to undertake big centralized investment programmes, he offered a more pragmatic approach to infrastructure planning that would help break the “interlocking vicious circles” of underdevelopment (Hirschman, 1958: 5). This would occur by allowing infrastructure (“social overhead capital”) to lag behind in an investment sequence beginning with productive private investment primarily in the capital goods and intermediate goods sectors (see Hirschman, 1958: 83).