Browse

Accelerating energy innovation could be an important part of an effective response to the threat of climate change. This book complements existing research on the subject with an exploration of the role that public and private policy have played in enabling—and sustaining—swift innovation in a variety of industries, from agriculture and the life sciences to information technology. Chapters highlight the factors that have determined the impact of past policies, and suggest that effectively managed federal funding, strategies to increase customer demand, and the enabling of aggressive competition from new firms are important ingredients for policies that affect innovative activity.

The way jurisdiction over land is distributed among members of a community has a powerful influence over how efficiently land is used, the incidence of poverty, and the level of inequality in the community. Yet much land in less developed countries is underutilized and/or misused from a sustainability standpoint: lack of access to land or unfavorable terms of access remain a fundamental cause of poverty. In addition, unmet demands for land can be a source of political destabilization. At the same time, there presently exist unusual opportunities to reopen the issue of access to land. They include an increasing concern with the efficiency costs of inequality in land distribution, devolution of common property resource management to users, large scale redefinitions of property rights in the context of transition economies in Eastern and central Europe and the end of white rule in South Africa, liberalization of land markets, mounting pressure to deal with environmental issues, the proliferation of civil society organizations voicing the demands of the rural poor, and more democratic forms of governance. Much attention has been given to state-led redistributive land reforms. Other channels include inheritance and inter-vivos transfers, intrahousehold and intracommunity land allocations, community titling of open access resources, the distribution of common property resources and the individualization of rights, decollectivization, land markets and land market-assisted land reforms, and land rental contracts. This book analyzes each of these channels of access to land, and recommends ways of making them more effective.

In the development literature, some countries are cited more often than others as examples of development success. These countries are understood to have policies and institutions in place that could be transferred, at least in part, to less successful countries both within their own regions, and elsewhere in the world. As such, they may constitute ‘role models of development’. This scholarly volume contains historical accounts of a select set of successful countries in the developing world; successful by virtue of their growth and development path—albeit at times in an uneven, non-linear, and patchy manner. Each unique case describes the fundamental ‘causes’ of success: initial conditions and resources; local, regional, and international factors shaping the national state of affairs; and contributions to the development process by internal and external actors and institutions. Each country has a story to tell from which useful lessons can be drawn. While other similar works have presented cases of successful development strategies, they tend to be region-specific or constitute a relatively small number of cases. This book takes a more wide-ranging perspective involving a large number of country studies, spanning world regions and development levels.

This book examines traditional insurance risks such as earthquakes, storms, terrorist attacks, and other disasters. It begins with a discussion of how the risk of such “acts of God and men” impact on our lives, health, and possessions. It then proceeds to introduce the statistical techniques necessary for analyzing these uncertainties. It explains that quantifying the risks that such disasters pose is difficult but that it is crucial for achieving the financing objectives of insurance. The book guides readers through the methods available for identifying and measuring such risks, financing their consequences, and forecasting their future behaviour (within the limits of science). It also considers the experience of risk from the perspectives of both policyholders and insurance companies, and compares their respective responses. The discussion of the risks inherent in the private insurance industry leads to a discussion of the government's role as both market regulator and potential “insurer of last resort.” The book concludes with an interdisciplinary investigation into the nature of uncertainty, incorporating ideas from physics, philosophy, and game theory to assess science's limitations in predicting the ramifications of risk.

The book provides a comprehensive account of the human development (HD) approach to development. It shows how it emerged as a consequence of defects in earlier strategies, especially growth maximization. The book investigates the determinants of success and failure in HD across developing countries over the past forty years. Cross-country investigations show broad determinants of success and failure, while country studies give detailed examples of the policies and politics of HD. HD is multidimensional, and the book points to the importance of social institutions and social capabilities as essential aspects which are often overlooked. Yet the widely cited Human Development Index does not measure these aspects nor many of the other important dimensions of HD. The book analyses political conditions which are critical factors underlying performance on HD. The final chapter surveys global progress on multiple dimensions over a forty-year period and shows that there has been marked and pervasive improvement in many of them, including basic HD—life expectancy and infant mortality, education and incomes—as well as political freedoms. But there has been deterioration on some dimensions—with rising inequality in many countries and worsening environmental conditions. The book concludes with challenges to the approach—in particular insufficient attention has been paid to the macroeconomic conditions and economic structure needed for sustained success; and social institutions and political conditions have also been neglected. But the biggest neglect is the environment—with worsening global environmental conditions potentially threatening future achievements on HD.

This is volume I of a four volume set, with papers developed as part of a large-scale project and associated conference series funded by the Gates Foundation. It is comprised of careful empirical reports on progress with economic, political, and social development in Africa over recent decades. Papers are grouped by a rough hierarchy of development. The first volume therefore deals with the essential issues that any country must resolve if there is to be any kind of sustained economic growth and shared benefits from development: is there social peace, does the government function in any kind of reasonable manner, and how does the private sector cope with government dysfunction? The broad theme of our project was that Africa has made much more progress with economic and social development than is widely supposed, and that there is a great deal of success – particularly since 1990 – from which lessons can be gleaned. The papers in this volume deal with ensuring peace after civil conflict, establishing a robust level of revenue for government, thinking about the implications of who holds political power, creating secure property rights, and understanding the nature of the informal economy. Papers also cover important policy innovations, both around road safety and economic development more broadly. We also include a paper that could become a model of how to measure changes in household and per capita income using available data from Africa, and a detailed case study that focuses on the impact of foreign aid on growth.

This is Volume II of a four set series that reports on progress with economic, political, and social development in Africa over recent decades. Volume I deals with social peace, the basic functioning (or not) of government, and how to measure economic development at the household level. Volume II is focused on human capital. This includes public health and various efforts to improve the empowerment–and thus the human development outcomes–for women and girls. We place these issues in a broad economic context, and also include some cutting-edge research on other dimensions of human capital in the African development context. As with the overall economic picture on the past two decades, there are signs of improvement along purely social dimensions of development in Africa. Volume I established that the institutional context for development in Africa remains difficult. But a key theme in Volume II is that no one should conclude that African specifics imply nothing works or that everything becomes corrupted into being completely ineffective. Our researchers have identified important issues, as well as interventions or policy innovations that appear to be gaining traction. The companion volumes III and IV deal with modernization and sustainable growth respectively. Countries covered in detail in this volume include Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia.

This is Volume III of a four volume set that reports on progress with economic, political, and social development in Africa over recent decades. Volume I deals with the essential issues of social stability and other prerequisites for growth. Volume II covers health, gender, and education, all of which are of first-order importance if people are to benefit from and contribute to economic development. Volume III focuses on specific issues of modernization and three key sectors or types of economic activity: finance, mobile phones, and exports. The papers in Volume III contain some firm-level analysis, studies of specific sectors, and cross-country econometrics. We did not attempt to build a comprehensive picture across all countries, but there is a great deal of information about what is going on in wide range of countries – the chapters in this volume contain more in-depth studies of Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Our main goal was to provide a catalyst for applied research on Africa, and this set of papers demonstrates how we set about achieving that objective. The authors include top researchers, among them people with a great deal of Africa experience and those for whom this was their first time digging into African realities.

This is Volume IV of a four volume set reporting on research on Africa funded by the Gates Foundation. Volume I is focused on conditions that make growth possible; Volume II deals with human development; and Volume III discusses ways in which modernization has come to sub-Saharan Africa, including banking, mobile phones, and dimensions of the export sector. Volume IV examines whether recent African growth rates will prove sustainable. This volume offers three different ways to address this general question. First, five of our research teams look at the details of African agriculture, ranging from its overall prospects to the specific institutional arrangements in two countries. As in our other volumes, the chapters here set a high standard in terms of putting together high quality data and analyzing it using appropriate statistical and econometric technique. Second, one team looked carefully at barriers to trade within West Africa – what keeps markets segmented and prevents trade from developing? Can these obstacles be overcome in the foreseeable future? Four teams look at particular country case studies to understand growth and development and also pay considerable attention to episodes of poor economic performance. Researchers participating in this project were encouraged to combine careful NBER-type empirical analysis with investigations of specific country experiences. In terms of in-depth country analysis, this volume includes material on Cape Verde, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

The Arab Spring constitutes perhaps the most far-reaching political and economic transition since the end of communism in Europe. For too long, the economic aspirations of the people in the region, especially young people, have been ignored by leaders in Arab countries and abroad. Competing views as to how best to meet these aspirations are now being debated in the region. The outcome will shape Arab societies for generations to come. This book argues that significant economic reforms must accompany the major political transitions that are underway. Although each country has a different economic structure and history and must make its own way forward, there are spill-overs from trade and investment linkages, the contagion of news cycles, interaction of people and sharing of expectations that are too great to ignore. Some common foundation of the new Arab economies is needed. Towards that end, this volume addresses four central challenges of economic reform in the Arab world. First, with two-thirds of the population under the age of thirty, the disproportionate burdens of unemployment and poor education can no longer be heaped on youth. Second, while some government policies may have improved the living standards of Arab citizens in the past, they have also entrenched cronies, enriched a small elite, and become unaffordable. Third, if Arab economies are to compete in the 21st century they cannot depend solely on oil and gas money, remittances, and tourism, but will require active, independent private sectors. And finally, the relative isolation of Arab economies—both from each other and from the world—must end. Rather than providing specific lists of recommendations, this book sets forth a set of guidelines and priorities for reformers who will begin creating new opportunities for youth, rebuilding the institutions of the state, diversifying the private sector, and cooperating with each other and integrating with the world economy.

South Korea’s economic development trajectory has been widely studied and is well understood. From an impoverished war-torn nation, the country has progressed on all fronts, including a ten-fold increase in per capita income over a forty-year period. It stands out internationally when it comes to education and politically it has moved away from authoritarianism to a more spirited democratic system. In short, it seems to have achieved it all. The question is, what does a country do after it has attained development? This volume addresses this question by examining Korea’s strategic engagement with Asia as a response to the limits of the home market. Access to new markets and resources in Asia through exports and foreign investment are critical. Additionally, with Korea’s ongoing demographic crisis, its engagement with foreign workers is also inevitable. This volume takes a collective look at how Korea is responding through regional integration, strategic industrial upgrading of exports, foreign markets and resources, and coping with migrants, including unskilled workers, students, and professionals. The transfer of Korean business and employment practices through investment to other countries and accommodating foreigners is not trouble-free. Further, prosperity imposes demands for increased social welfare, while the workings of contemporary global capitalism introduce new sources of inequality. Sharing that prosperity with small firms, irregular workers, and women becomes critical. This volume ends with a roundup of the key internal challenges facing Korean society and suggests the multiple ways to address them as a related response to Korea’s after-development prosperity.

This book contains chapters that deal with the agricultural crisis in India. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the macroeconomic and micro-level issues associated with the crisis, as well as the underlying historical forces. It examines the factors contributing to the crisis, including environmental degradation, the decrease in landholding size, plateauing of crop yields from the present farm technology, and withdrawal of state support. The book shows that rapid growth of India's gross domestic product has not created enough opportunities for rural labour force to make the transition from agriculture to the rapidly growing sectors of the economy. Agricultural transformation has been slow due to low growth of farm productivity, low agricultural prices, inadequate employment opportunities outside agriculture, and low demand for agricultural products due to stagnation of per capita food consumption during 1993–2005. The book presents case studies on farmer suicides and provides insights into their underlying causes, arguing that suicides are symptomatic of a deep-rooted crisis in agriculture. The book claims that agriculture in India can be revived only by addressing two dimensions of the agricultural distress, namely, agricultural development crisis and agrarian crisis. It emphasizes the need to improve public investment in agricultural infrastructure and social overheads such as quality education and health facilities in rural areas.

There are many books about aid and development, but most of them either assume a good deal of prior knowledge about the subject, or are written to make the case for or against aid. This book sets aid and development in its historical context, and shows the strong linkages between aid and development priorities on the one hand, and political realities and shifts on the other. It looks at different ideas about development (and concepts of ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries) and how aid can support development. It makes it clear that, ultimately, development is about the well-being of everyone, and of the planet, and must be addressed as a global issue.

From an unpromising start as ‘the basket case’ to present-day plaudits for its human development achievements, Bangladesh plays an ideological role in the contemporary world order, offering proof that the neo-liberal development model works under the most testing conditions. How were such rapid gains possible in a context of chronically weak governance? The Aid Lab subjects this so-called ‘Bangladesh paradox’ to close scrutiny, evaluating public policies and their outcomes for poverty and development since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. Countering received wisdom that its gains owe to an early shift to market-oriented economic reform, it argues that a binding political settlement, a social contract to protect against the crises of subsistence and survival, united the elite, the masses, and their aid donors in the wake of the devastating famine of 1974. This laid resilient foundations for human development, fostering a focus on the poorest and most precarious, and in particular on the concerns of women. In chapters examining the environmental, political, and socioeconomic crisis of the 1970s, the book shows how the lessons of the famine led to a robustly pro-poor growth and social policy agenda, empowering the Bangladeshi state and its non-governmental organizations to protect and enable its population to thrive in its engagements in the global economy. Now a middle-income country, Bangladesh’s role as the world’s laboratory for aided development has generated lessons well beyond its borders, and Bangladesh continues to carve a pioneering pathway through the risks of global economic integration and climate change.

The year 2008 marks Amartya Sen's 75th birthday. Amartya has made deep and lasting contributions to the academic disciplines of economics, philosophy, and more broadly the social sciences. He has engaged in policy dialogue and public debate, advancing the cause of a human development focused policy agenda, and a tolerant and democratic polity. This argumentative Indian has made the case for the poorest of the poor, and for plurality in cultural perspective. It is not surprising that he has won the highest awards, ranging from the Nobel Prize in Economics to the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor. This public recognition has gone hand in hand with the affection and admiration that Amartya's colleagues and students hold for him. This is the first book in a two-volume Festschrift for Amartya Sen. The chapters, from across a range of social science disciplines, are written by some of the world's leading thinkers. This first book covers the topics of ethics, normative economics, and welfare; agency, aggregation, and social choice; poverty, capabilities, and measurement; and identity, collective action, and public economics. It is a fitting tribute to Sen's own contributions to the discourse on ethics, welfare and measurement.

The year 2008 marks Amartya Sen's 75th birthday. Amartya has made deep and lasting contributions to the academic disciplines of economics, philosophy, and the social sciences more broadly. He has engaged in policy dialogue and public debate, advancing the cause of a human development focused policy agenda, and a tolerant and democratic polity. This argumentative Indian has made the case for the poorest of the poor, and for plurality in cultural perspective. It is not surprising that he has won the highest awards, ranging from the Nobel Prize in Economics to the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor. This public recognition has gone hand in hand with the affection and admiration that Amartya's colleagues and students hold for him. This is the second book in a two-volume Festschrift for Amartya Sen. The chapters, from across a range of social science disciplines, are written by some of the world's leading thinkers. This second book covers the topics of human development and capabilities; gender and household; growth, poverty, and policy; and society, politics, and history. It is a fitting tribute to Sen's own contributions to the discourse on society, institutions and development.

South Korea has been quietly growing into a major economic force that is even challenging some Japanese industries. This book examines South Korean economic growth as an example of “late industrialization,” a process in which a nation's industries learn from earlier innovator nations rather than innovate themselves. Discussing state intervention, shop‐floor management, and big business groups, the reasons are explored for South Korea's phenomenal growth, paying special attention to the principle of reciprocity in which the government imposes strict performance standards on those industries and companies that it aids. It is shown thereby how South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan were able to grow faster than other emerging nations such as Brazil, Turkey, India, and Mexico. The book is arranged in three main parts: Part 1 surveys South Korean history and the origins of state policies that led to the successes of its late industrialization; Part 2 examines the ways in which the South Korean management and workforce were transformed into major factors in the growth of its industry; and Part 3 discusses the creation of comparative advantage in several industries and the reasons why only one kept pace with expansion while the others drove it.

Most people would agree that it makes sense to tax a company that pollutes in a way that directly reflects the amount of environmental and social damage it has done. Yet in practice, such taxes are fraught with difficulty and have far-reaching implications. A company facing a new tax may lay off workers, for example, exacerbating an unemployment problem. This volume focuses on such external issues and examines in detail the trade-offs involved in designing policies to deal with environmental problems. Reflecting the broad nature of the subject, the contributors include leading economists in the areas of public finance, industrial organization, and trade theory, as well as environmental economists. Integrating both theoretical and empirical methods, they examine environmental policy design as it relates to location decisions, compliance costs, administrative costs, effects on research and development, and international factor movements.