Results by title

For many decades, underdevelopment in much of the world was blamed variously on capital deficits, exploitation by rich nations, and market-distorting economic policies. The chapters in this volume provide much of the evidence underpinning a growing consensus among development and growth economists that successful economic development depends more fundamentally on the way societies are organized and governed. They argue that "good governance" is a prerequisite to sustained increases in living standards.
The difference between developmental success and failure in this view has little to do with natural resource availability, climate, aid, or developed nations' policies. Rather, it is largely a function of whether incentives within a given society steer wealth-maximizing individuals toward producing new wealth or toward diverting it from others. The chapters, seminal essays written by Mancur Olson and his IRIS Center colleagues, provide theoretical and/or empirical underpinnings for the emerging consensus that differences in the way governments and societies are organized have enormous implications for the structure of incentives faced by politicians, bureaucrats, investors, and workers, which in turn determines the level of a nation's material well-being.
Overall this volume applies tools and concepts from the "New Institutional Economics" to some of the major issues in economic development. It will be of interest to scholars and students of various disciplines--including political science, law, and sociology as well as economics--interested in the determinants of economic development and global economic change. The book will also be of interest to many aid practitioners, particularly those working in anticorruption and public sector reform issues.
Stephen Knack is Senior Research Economist, Development Research Group, the World Bank.

Recently, real and artificial barriers to international transactions have fallen sharply, causing a rise in the overall volume of international trade. East Asia has been particularly affected by the economic stresses and gains derived from deregulation. Deregulation and Interdependence in the Asia-Pacific Region explores the broadly similar experiences of certain economies in the region—China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea—in dealing with the potentially volatile process of deregulation, and examines the East Asian response to a rapidly transforming economic environment.

Uganda's recovery since Museveni came to power in 1986 has been one of the heartening achievements in a continent where the media have given intense coverage to disasters. This book assesses the question of whether the reality lives up to the image that has so impressed the supporters of its recovery. What has actually happened? How successful have the reforms been thus far? What are the prospects for Uganda's future?

Essays by the top scholars in the Weld span the breadth of the issue, from Uganda's growth out of poverty to development at the grass roots level. Developing Uganda replaces the myth and misinformation the last decade has witnessed with a realistic scrutiny by those who have studied it with care and caution.

The 1990s witnessed significant changes in the Cuban economy. The first half of the decade focused on obtaining the adjustments necessary to enable the country to overcome the profound economic crisis that had befallen it. The second half was characterized by the reality and possibilities of economic recovery. This volume may be the first academic text specifically written to assess the development perspectives of Cuba in the new conditions that prevail. The overarching question is "What comes after recovery?" The authors deal with questions of immediate relevance to the Cuban economy and its recent past, with emphasis placed on the implications for long-term prospects for development. This reflects the conviction that solutions to the challenge of development will require longer periods of analysis and different areas of focus than those which have served as the temporal and conceptual references for recent studies of the island's economy.
Contributors include Julio Carranza, Anicia Garcia, Hiram Marquetti, Lazaro Pena, Omar Everleny Perez, and Julio Diaz Vazquez (University of Havana, Cuba), Claes Brundenius (Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, Denmark), David Dapice (Tufts University and Harvard University, USA), Francisco Leon (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), and Mauricio de Miranda (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia).

Why are some countries richer than others? Why do some economies grow so much faster than others do? Do economies tend to converge at similar levels of per capita income? Or is catching up simply impossible? These questions have vast implications for human welfare. After a period of lack of interest in growth theory, they are back on the research agenda of mainstream economics. They have also been at the heart of development economics since its inception some decades ago. This book endeavors to answer such questions by blending classical contributions to development theory with recent developments in the economics of growth.

The unifying theme is that early theoretical insights and accumulated empirical knowledge of development economics have much to offer to research in the theory and empirics of economic growth. With the help of a number of recent contributions, the ideas and insights of the classical literature in development economics can be given simple and rigorous formulations. Together, they amount to an approach to growth theory that can overcome the long-recognized empirical shortcomings of neoclassical growth economics, while being free from the objections that can be raised against the new brand of endogenous growth theory.

In addition to an original thesis on the contribution that early development theory can make to the research program of modern growth economics, the book provides professional and research economists and graduate students with an evaluation of the strengths and limitations of the different strands of inquiry in the modern economics of growth. In addition it presents findings on comparative growth performance across countries.

Jaime Ros is Professor of Economics and Faculty Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute of International Studies, University of Notre Dame.

The victory by Vicente Fox Quesada in Mexico's July 2000 presidential election was a watershed in the country's political history. His triumph convincingly marked the consolidation of electoral democracy and, by ending seven decades of uninterrupted national rule by the "official" Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), symbolized a clear break with the political regime established following the 1910-1920 revolution. Nevertheless, many legacies of postrevolutionary authoritarianism persist, and Mexico's democratization process remains incomplete. The seventeen contributors to this volume assess Mexico's political dynamics at the turn of the century and the many pending challenges in the construction of a more fully democratic political order.
They examine: (1) changes affecting the party system, electoral institutions, and voting behavior; (2) the evolving role of the armed forces, organized labor, big business, and rural producers; (3) the new importance of civil society, the mass media, and cross-border social coalitions; (4) and key issues of political representation and governance, including executive-legislative relations, judicial performance, federalism, the constitutional rights of indigenous peoples, and the political role of Mexicans resident in the United States.

While endogenous growth theory has claimed success in modeling various factors of growth and providing an analysis of sustainable economic growth, most of the growth models in published work are for closed economies. The omission of international trade, which is often regarded as the engine of growth, greatly reduces their usefulness. The theory of international trade, on the other hand, is characterized by models that are mainly static. While interest in the dynamics of trade has been growing, there is still little work in this area. The success of the newly industrialized economies that have adopted trade-oriented policies suggests how limited present trade theory is in explaining and analyzing the growth of these economies.

The work collected here serves to bridge the "old" growth theory and "new" growth theory; merge growth and trade theory; suggest new analysis and techniques of economic growth; and provide analysis of new issues related to growth and trade. The first chapter surveys endogenous growth and international trade and critically reviews the endogenous growth theory with a unified framework, covering the work on both closed and open economies. Three chapters examine the dynamics of some basic trade models; two chapters focus on growth and trade with endogenous accumulation of human and public capital; two chapters on economic growth, technological progress, and international trade; and two chapters on growth and international factor movements.

Contributors include Eric W. Bond, Theo S. Eicher, Rolf Färe, Oded Galor, Shawna Grosskopf, Bjarne S. Jensen, Pantelis Kalaitzidakis, Shoukang Lin, Ngo Van Long, Kazuo Nishimura, Koji Shimomura, Kathleen Trask, Stephen J. Turnovsky, Pham Hoang Van, Henry Wan, Jr., Chunyan Wang, and Kar-yiu Wong.

Bjarne S. Jensen is Associate Professor of Economics, Copenhagen Business School. Kar-yiu Wong is Professor of Economics, University of Washington, Seattle.