The book is orientated towards the teaching of economics within the context of the major problems of development and underdevelopment in Third World nations and fills a major void in the teaching materials available for this purpose. It has been written for use by first-year economic students at universities throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
The growth in real income per person in the third-world nations of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, about twofold since 1950, is a mixed record. On the one hand, the growth warrants optimism, particularly in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, China, other fast-growing Pacific Rim countries, and Brazil.
Most of the world's people live in "developing" economies, as do most of the world's poor. The predominant means of economic development is economic growth. In this book Gary Fields asks to what extent and in what circumstances economic growth improves the material standard of living of a country's people. Most development economists agree that economic growth raises the incomes of people in all parts of the income distribution and lowers the poverty rate. At the same time, some groups lose out because of changes accompanying economic growth. Fields examines these beliefs, asking what variables should be measured to determine whether progress is being made and what policies and circumstances cause some countries to do better than others. He also shows how the same data can be interpreted to reach different, even conflicting, conclusions. Using both theoretical and empirical approaches, Fields defines and examines inequality, poverty, income mobility, and economic well-being. Finally, he considers various policies for broad-based growth. Copublished with the Russell Sage Foundation.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
Inequality has emerged as a key development challenge. It holds implications for economic growth and redistribution and translates into power asymmetries that can endanger human rights, create conflict, and embed social exclusion and chronic poverty. For these reasons, it underpins intense public and academic debates and has become a dominant policy concern within many countries and in all multilateral agencies. It is at the core of the 17 goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This book contributes to this important discussion by presenting assessments of the measurement and analysis of global inequality by leading inequality scholars, aligning these to comprehensive reviews of inequality trends in five of the world's largest developing countries - Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa.
This book presents development strategies and lessons based on a large range of 'success' countries across the developing world. In addition to the country cases, it presents regional and overall syntheses that cover orthodox vs. heterodox policies; the importance of capability, primary exports, diversification and financing; managing diversity; the role of institutions and governance; and human development. The book reveals much diversity in successful development strategies offered by the various select countries: for example, the 'disinterested-government' political economy of China; the democratically supported, high-service-sector development approach of India; the 'Washington-Consensus-based' reforms of Ghana and China; the diversification strategies of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Oman; the dynamic orthodox-heterodox strategy of Malaysia and Vietnam; the effective natural-resource management of Botswana, Oman, Bahrain and the UAE; the social-sector underpinnings of development in Costa Rica and Tunisia; and the democratic political system of managing diversity in India. This refreshing approach to studying development will interest researchers, teachers, students, development practitioners and policymakers alike.
The new book that's sparked discussion both in Washington and European financial capitals Policy makers in the developing world are grappling with new dilemmas created by openness to trade and capital flows. What role, if any, remains for the state in promoting industrialization? Does openness worsen inequality, and if so, what can be done about it? What is the best way to handle turbulence from the world economy, especially the fickleness of international capital flows? In The New Global Economy and Developing Countries Dani Rodrik argues that successful integration into the world economy requires a complementary set of policies and institutions at home. Policy makers must reinforce their external strategy of liberalization with an internal strategy that gives the state substantial responsibility in building physical and human capital and mediating social conflicts.
'This volume not only offers an invaluable retrospective of the World Bank's best thinking on development but also has the analytical caliber and policy insights to become an indispensable source for those dealing with the present and future growth and equity challenges faced by the developing countries.' -- Ernesto Zedillo
This book reflects on current thinking in development economics and on what may happen over the next two decades. As well as studying development economics in retrospect, the volume explores the current debates and challenges and looks forward at the problems that affect the global capacity to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.
