The Elusive Quest for Growth

The Elusive Quest for Growth PDF Author: William R. Easterly
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262260654
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Why economists' attempts to help poorer countries improve their economic well-being have failed. Since the end of World War II, economists have tried to figure out how poor countries in the tropics could attain standards of living approaching those of countries in Europe and North America. Attempted remedies have included providing foreign aid, investing in machines, fostering education, controlling population growth, and making aid loans as well as forgiving those loans on condition of reforms. None of these solutions has delivered as promised. The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work. In this book Easterly shows how these solutions all violate the basic principle of economics, that people—private individuals and businesses, government officials, even aid donors—respond to incentives. Easterly first discusses the importance of growth. He then analyzes the development solutions that have failed. Finally, he suggests alternative approaches to the problem. Written in an accessible, at times irreverent, style, Easterly's book combines modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank.

The Elusive Quest for Growth

The Elusive Quest for Growth PDF Author: William R. Easterly
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262260654
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why economists' attempts to help poorer countries improve their economic well-being have failed. Since the end of World War II, economists have tried to figure out how poor countries in the tropics could attain standards of living approaching those of countries in Europe and North America. Attempted remedies have included providing foreign aid, investing in machines, fostering education, controlling population growth, and making aid loans as well as forgiving those loans on condition of reforms. None of these solutions has delivered as promised. The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work. In this book Easterly shows how these solutions all violate the basic principle of economics, that people—private individuals and businesses, government officials, even aid donors—respond to incentives. Easterly first discusses the importance of growth. He then analyzes the development solutions that have failed. Finally, he suggests alternative approaches to the problem. Written in an accessible, at times irreverent, style, Easterly's book combines modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank.

Elusive Development

Elusive Development PDF Author: Marshall Wolfe
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781856493802
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This deeply thoughtful book explores some of the very difficult questions thrown up by the development process, Marshall Wolfe reviews what has been said and done in the name of development over four decades. He sees development as 'a Sisyphean task of trying to impose value-oriented rationality on realities that remain permanently recalcitrant to such reality' precisely because its key actors - be they the state, social groups, development agencies, individual 'experts', or the market - cannot be assumed to be either benevolent or consistently rational.

Under-Rewarded Efforts

Under-Rewarded Efforts PDF Author: Santiago Levy Algazi
Publisher: Inter-American Development Bank
ISBN: 1597823058
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Why has an economy that has done so many things right failed to grow fast? Under-Rewarded Efforts traces Mexico’s disappointing growth to flawed microeconomic policies that have suppressed productivity growth and nullified the expected benefits of the country’s reform efforts. Fast growth will not occur doing more of the same or focusing on issues that may be key bottlenecks to productivity growth elsewhere, but not in Mexico. It will only result from inclusive institutions that effectively protect workers against risks, redistribute towards those in need, and simultaneously align entrepreneurs’ and workers’ incentives to raise productivity.

The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development

The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development PDF Author: Karen Engle
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822392968
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Around the world, indigenous peoples use international law to make claims for heritage, territory, and economic development. Karen Engle traces the history of these claims, considering the prevalence of particular legal frameworks and their costs and benefits for indigenous groups. Her vivid account highlights the dilemmas that accompany each legal strategy, as well as the persistent elusiveness of economic development for indigenous peoples. Focusing primarily on the Americas, Engle describes how cultural rights emerged over self-determination as the dominant framework for indigenous advocacy in the late twentieth century, bringing unfortunate, if unintended, consequences. Conceiving indigenous rights as cultural rights, Engle argues, has largely displaced or deferred many of the economic and political issues that initially motivated much indigenous advocacy. She contends that by asserting static, essentialized notions of indigenous culture, indigenous rights advocates have often made concessions that threaten to exclude many claimants, force others into norms of cultural cohesion, and limit indigenous economic, political, and territorial autonomy. Engle explores one use of the right to culture outside the context of indigenous rights, through a discussion of a 1993 Colombian law granting collective land title to certain Afro-descendant communities. Following the aspirations for and disappointments in this law, Engle cautions advocates for marginalized communities against learning the wrong lessons from the recent struggles of indigenous peoples at the international level.

Elusive Development

Elusive Development PDF Author: Yusif A. Sayigh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134924674
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The oil boom prompted a massive inflow of capital into the Arab region. But whilst the investment this facilitated clearly had benefits for the region, the developmental achievements of the boom decade are demonstrably unable to match the magnitude of the resources directed to development and the reasonable expectations invested in it. Professor Yusif Sayigh draws a powerful and painful lesson from this experience applicable to other areas: you cannot buy development; it must be soundly oriented and sought with resolve by society's leaderships and a people enjoying a large measure of freedom and political participation.

Poverty and Elusive Development

Poverty and Elusive Development PDF Author: Dan Banik
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788215012186
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book questions the current status of the development agenda and examines why development has eluded large groups of people living in poverty. It argues that there is a general unwillingness to understand, and focus adequate attention on, the factors that explain the continued production of poverty and inequality. Development has also become increasingly buzzword-driven, although little effort is made to operationalise such terms for actual implementation on the ground. The book further highlights how development interventions have become largely synonymous with "crises" and why there is a need to refocus our attention on the less sensational, and often invisible, processes that perpetuate poverty. Based on a critical analysis of local, national and global efforts to promote social, economic and political development, the book focuses on a selected set of interrelated issues that form an integral part of the current development discourse: corruption, democracy, human rights, climate change and foreign aid. These are discussed on the basis of empirical evidence from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Elusive Agenda

The Elusive Agenda PDF Author: Rounaq Jahan
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Reviewing the progress achieved in making gender a central concern in the development progress, this book evaluates selected leading bilateral and multilateral donor agencies, including the World Bank, which have played a critical role in shaping the development agenda.

Elusive Childhood

Elusive Childhood PDF Author: Susan Honeyman
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 081421004X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
"Elusive Childhood examines how discourse touched by the identity politics of youth might be revised for fairness. Susan Honeyman demonstrates this potential by reading representations of children from throughout the Modern episteme in works of such writers as Henry James, Edith Wharton, and James Baldwin. Identity politics have changed the way we classify literature by opening up the canon, but they have also changed the way we approach literature. We've learned to recognize that biology is not destiny - sex doesn't necessarily determine gender or orientation, nor do fictitious absolutes like blood ratios measure ethnocultural identity, and so in an effort to avoid false generalizing about "others" we endorse individual self-representation, all the while recognizing how society constructs us." "But when it comes to representing the position we call childhood, there is little opportunity in legitimated discourse for children's self-representation and inadequate attention to social constructedness. Recognizing political inequity in literary representations of children, Honeyman proposes a method of reading child figuration in relief to impose as little adult prejudice as possible. This might be impossible for adults, yet it is necessary to attempt."--BOOK JACKET.

Elusive Promises

Elusive Promises PDF Author: Simone Abram
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857459163
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Planning in contemporary democratic states is often understood as a range of activities, from housing to urban design, regional development to economic planning. This volume sees planning differently—as the negotiation of possibilities that time offers space. It explores what kind of promise planning offers, how such a promise is made, and what happens to it through time. The authors, all leading anthropologists, examine the time and space, creativity and agency, authority and responsibility, and conflicting desires that plans attempt to control. They show how the many people involved with planning deal with the discrepancies between what is promised and what is done. The comparative essays offer insight into the expected and unexpected outcomes of planning (from visionary utopias to bureaucratic dystopia or something in-between), how the future is envisioned at the outset, and what actual work is done and how it affects people’s lives.

The Coffee Paradox

The Coffee Paradox PDF Author: Benoit Daviron
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848136293
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Can developing countries trade their way out of poverty? International trade has grown dramatically in the last two decades in the global economy, and trade is an important source of revenue in developing countries. Yet, many low-income countries have been producing and exporting tropical commodities for a long time. They are still poor. This book is a major analytical contribution to understanding commodity production and trade, as well as putting forward policy-relevant suggestions for ‘solving’ the commodity problem. Through the study of the global value chain for coffee, the authors recast the ‘development problem’ for countries relying on commodity exports in entirely new ways. They do so by analysing the so-called coffee paradox – the coexistence of a ‘coffee boom’ in consuming countries and of a ‘coffee crisis’ in producing countries. New consumption patterns have emerged with the growing importance of specialty, fair trade and other ‘sustainable’ coffees. In consuming countries, coffee has become a fashionable drink and coffee bar chains have expanded rapidly. At the same time, international coffee prices have fallen dramatically and producers receive the lowest prices in decades. This book shows that the coffee paradox exists because what farmers sell and what consumers buy are becoming increasingly ‘different’ coffees. It is not material quality that contemporary coffee consumers pay for, but mostly symbolic quality and in-person services. As long as coffee farmers and their organizations do not control at least parts of this ‘immaterial’ production, they will keep receiving low prices. The Coffee Paradox seeks ways out from this situation by addressing some key questions: What kinds of quality attributes are combined in a coffee cup or coffee package? Who is producing these attributes? How can part of these attributes be produced by developing country farmers? To what extent are specialty and sustainable coffees achieving these objectives?