For over forty years the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) has worked with countries in the developing world on the complex issues of economic and social reform. This volume describes the experience of the Institute in the challenging development assistance world of the 1980s and early 1990s, when HIID's largest projects involved work with countries attempting to move away from high levels of government intervention to more market-friendly systems. These efforts involved work in formerly centrally planned command economies (e.g., Russia, Vietnam, etc.) as well as in the mixed plan/market economies of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The book also describes HIID's efforts in education and health reform as well as in the rapidly expanding area of environmental economics and policy.

Assisting Development in a Changing World is an unvarnished account written by the HIID practitioners who participated in these programs and edited by its former director and executive directors.

In this first in-depth study of export-led growth in Peru, Michael Roemer demonstrates that, given the right conditions, primary product export industries can stimulate rapid and sustained economic growth in less developed countries—a possibility that has been either ignored or rejected by much development literature. Indeed, Peru's export-oriented economy succeeded in promoting diversification and industrialization, not in spite of, but because of its exports of primary products, especially fish meal. The most dramatic effect of this dynamic industry, according to the author, has been the establishment of a substantial capital-goods sector in Peru.

This study provides a comprehensive overview of Korea’s macroeconomic growth and structural change since World War II, and traces some of the roots of development to the colonial period. The authors explore in detail colonial development, changing national income patterns, relative price shifts, sources of aggregate growth, and sources of sectoral structural change, comparing them with other countries.