BiblioVault - Books about Economic Development

Banking Reform in Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Jacek Rostowski

Central European University Press, 1995

From Berlin to the Bering Strait, the business of banking has sprung to life. This analysis considers the impact of banking reform on macroeconomic stabilization and the suitability of universal banks, the role of banking regulation and the advantages of 'narrow banks' during transition, the cleaning up of bad debts, and the reform of the payments system.

The book assesses the lessons which can be drawn from reforms in Central Europe for the later reformers in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. It considers the impact of banking reform on macroeconomic stabilization and the suitability of German-type universal banks; the role of banking regulation and the advantages of 'narrow banks' during transition; the cleaning-up of bad debts; bank privatization and reform of the payments system. Five chapters follow which review the experience of some of the 'second-wave' countries: Estonia, Georgia, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

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Behind the Development Banks

Washington Politics, World Poverty, and the Wealth of Nations

Sarah Babb

University of Chicago Press, 2009

The World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) carry out their mission to alleviate poverty and promote economic growth based on the advice of professional economists. But as Sarah Babb argues in Behind the Development Banks, these organizations have also been indelibly shaped by Washington politics—particularly by the legislative branch and its power of the purse.

Tracing American influence on MDBs over three decades, this volume assesses increased congressional activism and the perpetual “selling” of banks to Congress by the executive branch. Babb contends that congressional reluctance to fund the MDBs has enhanced the influence of the United States on them by making credible America’s threat to abandon the banks if its policy preferences are not followed. At a time when the United States’ role in world affairs is being closely scrutinized, Behind the Development Banks will be necessary reading for anyone interested in how American politics helps determine the fate of developing countries.

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Between Field and Cooking Pot

The Political Economy of Marketwomen in Peru, Revised Edition

By Florence E. Babb

University of Texas Press, 1998

From reviews of the first edition:

"Between Field and Cooking Pot offers details of the daily lives of marketwomen in the central Andean departmental capital of Huaraz.... A welcome addition to studies of women and international development, this book contains a wealth of firsthand material, collected through informal participant-observation as well as formal interviews and analysis of statistical data.... The book encourages us to imagine how the dynamic culture of marketwomen might intersect with the construction, representation, and effects of class and gender."
—American Anthropologist

"The book has a clear and readable style, moving easily between vignettes of marketwomen's lives, descriptions of the markets themselves, and surveys of the theoretical literature. Babb's long, close involvement with the Huaraz markets is apparent. As someone who has spent a lot of time in Andean markets, I found the book pleasurable to read, because it recreated the experience of the marketplace so well."
—American Ethnologist

This revised edition of Between Field and Cooking Pot offers an updated appraisal of what neoliberal politics and economics mean in the lives of marketwomen in the nineties, based on new fieldwork conducted in 1997. Babb also reflects on how recent currents in feminist and anthropological studies have caused her to rethink some aspects of Andean marketers in Peruvian culture and society.

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The Burma Delta

Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852–1941

Michael Adas

University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

In the decades following its annexation to the Indian Empire in 1852, Lower Burma (the Irrawaddy-Sittang delta region) was transformed from an underdeveloped and sparsely populated backwater of the Konbaung Empire into the world’s largest exporter of rice. This seminal and far-reaching work focuses on two major aspects of that transformation: the growth of the agrarian sector of the rice industry of Lower Burma and the history of the plural society that evolved largely in response to rapid economic expansion.

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