This book examines how policies implemented by members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) affect development and poverty in developing and transition economies. Global Exchange and Poverty focuses on the influence of policy on foreign trade, migration, and investment and of their influence in turn on growth and poverty in developing countries.
GDN is proud to announce the publication of its latest book in the Global Development Series in collaboration with Edward Elgar Publishing.
The book, edited by Natalia Dinello and Wang Shaoguang, and entitled “China, India and Beyond: Development Drivers and Limitations” challenges the widespread belief that China and India will be the driving forces of the global economy in the twenty-first century.
Economists have long relied on cross-country regression analysis to identify the determinants of continued growth, but with only limited success. This book demonstrates the value of a different approach by drawing on the knowledge and understanding of local circumstances of researchers from the case-study countries.
Health policy is a central preoccupation of many, if not all, developing countries. This book presents a selection of ten studies that illustrate the powerful tool that carefully conducted research can offer policy-makers seeking to address common health policy issues. The studies included in this book illustrate the major gains to patients and citizens that can accrue from research efforts, stimulating research capacity in developing countries. Although many of the challenges confronting health systems are universal, it is often the case that research results derived from developing countries can be misleading when applied to the low or middle-income settings. This insightful book will be a valuable research tool for academics, researchers and policy-makers in economics and health.
This book offers insights into the process of economic reform in developing countries. It is organized around three factors that are critical to the success of any reform. According to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, these key dimensions are Reach, Range, and Reason. ‘Reach’ refers to the ability of reform to be person-centered and evenhanded, reaching all individuals in society. ‘Range’ considers the institutional reforms and policy changes necessary to implement change and the possible ripple effects on other policies and populations. Finally, ‘Reason’ captures the importance of constantly asking why a particular reform has been selected.
The events of the workshop on 'Interdisciplinary Research for Development', held at the GDN's 2008 Annual Global Development Conference, in BrisbaneAustralia, are now available as an e-book. The workshop reflected on the key implications for using an interdisciplinary approach to research. Seventeen researchers from thirteen low income countries examined the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats to interdisciplinary research; the implications for promoting this approach to research; and theoretical examples of interdisciplinary studies on HIV / AIDS and direct budget support.
The workbook explores both the content and process of interdisciplinary research by presenting the contributed papers from the seventeen researchers participating at the workshop. The papers and debates present some very innovative ideas on interdisciplinary approaches to development research. In doing so, they examine not just the challenges in linking disciplines, but also the strategic benefits in creating a more holistic and broad view for development research.
Explaining Growth in the Middle East Publication Year: 2007 Jeffrey B. Nugent, Hashem Pesaran (eds.), Amsterdam: Elsevier, Contributions to Economic Analysis Series
This book is about the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This region is generally perceived as having experienced the most disappointing growth performance over the last couple of decades of any region in the world with the possible exception of Sub-Sahara Africa. Despite the region's immense endowment of natural resources, its per capita income is often viewed as having stagnated. At the same time, most economies of the region have been characterized by extremely high volatility, a condition only partly attributable to the fluctuating price of oil. These studies we conducted as part of GDN’s first Global Research Project ‘Explaining Growth’
Political Institutions and Development challenges the cliché that ‘good institutions’ are essential for sustainable socio-economic development by focusing on the need to adapt potential solutions to local conditions. The authors argue that there is no one optimal institutional design that can be successfully applied to any country. The macro- and micro-level studies contained in this book demonstrate that institutions are highly context-dependent and time-sensitive and must be tailored to local conditions. Specifically, law and order, effective governance, ethnic sensitivity, a supporting political culture, civil rights, and individual opportunities to participate in decision-making are also necessary. With its global perspective, this book explores the relationship between political institutions and development from such diverse regions as the Commonwealth of Independent States, East and South Asia, and Latin America. This book will appeal to scholars and researchers in political science, economics, political economy, development studies and globalization. It will also find a wider audience amongst policymakers, development agencies and policy communities throughout the world.
Testing Global Interdependence Publication Year: 2007 Ernest Aryeetey, Natalia Dinello (eds.): GDN Series, Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK
One of the most charged dilemmas facing developing countries today is whether to embrace or reject globalization. Although much ink has been spilled by academics debating this issue, its resolution is a matter of practice. Although some developing countries have chosen to distance themselves from key players in the global arena, most have ventured to test the benefits and disadvantages of global interdependence. Presenting perspectives on a variety of issues related to trade, foreign aid, migration and development, this volume aims to translate a general theme of accepting globalization and gaining from deeper integration of various economies and societies, into practical questions about an effect of particular trade policies and agreements on poverty, consequences of government actions to reduce migration, and the rationale and implications of foreign aid. Comprising papers presented at the Sixth Annual Global Development Conference, held in Dakar, 2005 these narratives reflect multiple tests of global interdependence, which may ultimately suggest how to limit its negative aspects and how to ensure a constructive scenario of globalization.
Declining per capita income in Latin America relative to that in other countries has generated concerns about the region’s capacity to raise its living standards substantially. This comprehensive overview examines the growth process in Latin America and promotes urgently needed transformations to ensure the region’s long-term economic success.
This book examines the impetuses for, and the features and outcomes of, economic reforms in Africa, using the case studies of seven countries, including Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The case studies in this book address three main issues: (a) Why do countries embark on economic reforms? (b) What are the features of the reforms undertaken in the various African countries? (c) How well did the reforms perform? The book is based on the premise that a proper understanding of economic reforms is served by focusing on how the key variables play out in specific historical, geopolitical and socio-economic contexts.
Latin America has gone through a period of intense market reforms in the last twenty-five years. In contrast to the initial enthusiasm in the eighties and early nineties, a vivid debate currently exists as to whether market reforms have been instrumental in fostering development and whether reforms should be deepened or reversed. Those who favor a deepening consider successful Chile to be the flagship signaling the path to follow. Those who favor a change, argue that the Argentine crisis or the turbulence in the Venezuelan polity well illustrates the perils of the market- friendly structural changes. This debate has an importance that goes far beyond academic circles to the extent that the arguments and conclusions will undoubtedly influence future development strategies to be adopted not only in Latin America but also in other developing regions. The book collects eight country studies that comprise the most-often-cited reform cases and contributes to this debate.
During the last 25 years there has been a widespread move toward more market-oriented policies and institutions across the developing and former socialist countries, usually in the context of more politically open societies. The most remarkable result of this movement is that while policies have often been quite similar, results have been very different. Thirty-one country studies, relying heavily on a political economy and institutional analysis, were undertaken to try to understand these divergent results. In this book the findings of these studies are synthesized on a regional and global basis. Three of the case studies are also included. The syntheses show that even when reforms follow “Washington Consensus” type recommendations quite closely, on entering the arena of political economy, they are often greatly transformed or diluted
This edited volume of selected papers presented at the Fourth Annual Global Development Conference (Cairo, January 2003) analyzes links between globalization and equity from the perspectives of seven regions of the developing world. The contributions reflect the regions’ disparate experiences and represent diverse positions on globalization and equity. Nevertheless, they reveal a fledgling consensus on the benefits of the developing world’s entry into a global universe and the necessity for prudent adjustment to the perils of this endeavor. Most crucially, the volume represents voices that are seldom heard in the ongoing debate on globalization – those of researchers from the developing world.
During the last twenty-five years there has been a widespread move toward more market-oriented policies and institutions across the developing and former socialist (or current transition) countries, usually in the context of more politically open societies. The most remarkable fact of this movement is that while policies have often been quite similar results have been very different. This book attempts to lay groundwork for a political economy analysis of understanding what governments did differently - and why they did so - that led to such a wide variety of outcomes.
This book brings together ten original studies on the transition and growth experience and the foundations for long-term growth of the newly independent states created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Beginning with an overview of the common pre-1992 background and comparative information on the post-1992 performance of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, the authors continue by reviewing the Soviet background and post-independence experience. The contributors to the book are a combination of in-country researchers with in-depth local knowledge and access to data, and international economists with technical expertise and experience of long-term growth in other countries.
Explaining Growth is an attempt to compile the most comprehensive assessment of growth in developing and transition countries. The focus on growth does not imply the old mistake of seeing economic wealth as the ultimate measure of well-being. Rather, the project takes the view that growth provides the opportunity to use resources well, while stagnation robs countries of the power to act. The book recognizes there are many paths towards growth, some leading to dead-ends and others to sustainable poverty for all.
South Asian Experience with Growth Publication Year: 2003 Isher Ahluwalia & John Williamson (eds.), Oxford University Press; India (2003)
This book presents the results of the thematic papers for South Asia completed as part of GDN’s first Global Research Project Explaining Growth.. The book presents a conventional decomposition of growth into factor accumulation and total factor productivity increase for the five major economies of the region-India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. It also highlights the importance of a poverty-focus in economic reform strategies.
