Economic analysis of economic planning approaches to meet basic needs in developing countries - develops a macroeconomic planning framework; looks at alternative planning and policy options; makes a comparison of basic needs achievements in selected countries and types of economic policy associated with each; includes case studies of Nigeria and Tanzania. ILO mentioned. Bibliography, diagrams, graphs, references, statistical tables.
In The Limits of Choice, Sahra Wagenknecht examines household saving decisions and basic needs in Germany and the United States, based on official data from both countries from the 1950s to present day. Arguing against the hypothesis that assumes consumers optimize their consumption intertemporally based exclusively on their permanent or lifetime income, Wagenknecht proposes a rule of thumb, according to which consumers will save if their current income exceeds basic expenditure, while they will demand credit when income can no longer meet basic needs.
Economic and social progress requires a diverse ecosystem of firms that play complementary roles. Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms constitutes one of the most up-to-date assessments of how large firms are created in low- and middle-income countries and their role in development. It argues that large firms advance a range of development objectives in ways that other firms do not: large firms are more likely to innovate, export, and offer training and are more likely to adopt international standards of quality, among other contributions. Their particularities are closely associated with productivity advantages and translate into improved outcomes not only for their owners but also for their workers and for smaller enterprises in their value chains. The challenge for economic development, however, is that production does not reach economic scale in low- and middle-income countries. Why are large firms scarcer in developing countries? Drawing on a rare set of data from public and private sources, as well as proprietary data from the International Finance Corporation and case studies, this book shows that large firms are often born large—or with the attributes of largeness. In other words, what is distinct about them is often in place from day one of their operations. To fill the “missing top†? of the firm-size distribution with additional large firms, governments should support the creation of such firms by opening markets to greater competition. In low-income countries, this objective can be achieved through simple policy reorientation, such as breaking oligopolies, removing unnecessary restrictions to international trade and investment, and establishing strong rules to prevent the abuse of market power. Governments should also strive to ensure that private actors have the skills, technology, intelligence, infrastructure, and finance they need to create large ventures. Additionally, they should actively work to spread the benefits from production at scale across the largest possible number of market participants. This book seeks to bring frontier thinking and evidence on the role and origins of large firms to a wide range of readers, including academics, development practitioners and policy makers.
This symposium, which was held on March 10-11, 2003, at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, brought together policy experts and managers from the government and academic sectors in both developed and developing countries to (1) describe the role, value, and limits that the public domain and open access to digital data and information have in the context of international research; (2) identify and analyze the various legal, economic, and technological pressures on the public domain in digital data and information, and their potential effects on international research; and (3) review the existing and proposed approaches for preserving and promoting the public domain and open access to scientific and technical data and information on a global basis, with particular attention to the needs of developing countries.
Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.
By the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, an essential and paradigm-altering framework for understanding economic development--for both rich and poor--in the twenty-first century. Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers--perhaps even the majority of people--he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically restain a sense of social accountability. Development as Freedom is essential reading.
Human Development has been advocated as the prime development goal since 1990, when the publication of the first UNDP Human Development Report proposed that development should improve the lives people lead in multiple dimensions instead of primarily pursuing economic growth. This approach forms the foundation of Advancing Human Development: Theory and Practice. It traces the evolution of approaches to development, showing how the Human Development approach emerged as a consequence of defects in earlier strategies. Advancing Human Development argues that Human Development is superior to measures of societal happiness. It investigates the determinants of success and failure in Human Development across countries over the past forty years, taking a multidimensional approach to point to the importance of social institutions and social capabilities as essential aspects of change. It analyses political conditions underlying the performance of Human Development, and surveys global progress in multiple dimensions such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and education and outcomes, whilst reflecting on dimensions which have worsened over time, such as rising inequality and declining environmental conditions. These deteriorating conditions inform Advancing Human Development's account of the challenges to the Human Development approach, covering the insufficient attention paid to macroeconomic conditions and the economic structure needed for sustained success.
