Book Description
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.
Customer Reviews:
Yes indeed "People respond to incentives".......2007-06-19
Unlike Jeffrey Sachs in "The end of Poverty," who calls for a large-scale investment in the Third World countries and paying only scant attention to the importance of prior government commitment and endogenous (indigenous) policy reforms, Dr. Easterly strongly emphasizes domestic variables in shaping growth. His book highlights why growth have failed in most developing countries:"people respond to incentives." It is a must for anyone trying to understand the multidimensionality of growth. Orthodox elixirs have their limits....
Very interesting easy to read, light on solutions.......2007-04-21
Easterly's book in general does a very good job at simplifying the economic language and is easily accessible to all readers. The book also flows well and is an interesting read. He does a good job at describing and analyzing the problems with various economic growth policies. However, his solutions and paths to move forward are vague and simplified.
Elusive Fantasies on Global Prosperity.......2007-04-20
The persistence of poverty and underdevelopment in African countries after the independence of these countries might lead one to reevaluate the validity of the entire discipline of development studies. William Easterly does so from an institutional point of view. He argues that African countries' failure was partly a result of fictitious "panaceas". Albeit a bit more comprehensive, Easterly's method is not very different from the panaceas that failed, however: It is technology, stupid, not machines (p. 51).
Easterly argues that panaceas such as international aid, investment, education, and population control failed because they were not panaceas in the first place. He adamantly tries to show that there is no historical or statistical relationship between these "panaceas" and economic growth. His second argument as to why these methods failed to result in economic development is that they were not coupled with "right incentives". According to Easterly, governments, donors, and individuals respond to incentives; therefore, policies that do not create any incentives for either of these three are doomed to fail. Other than these policy issues, Easterly views technological advancement as the most concrete factor that determines the development of countries. Thus, rather than investment in machines, Easterly prescribes for poor countries investment in R & D. Given the absence of incentives for private parties to invest in R & D in poor countries, he suggests that the governments of poor countries should subsidize investment in new knowledge (p. 168).
Problems, Problems, Problems...
Putting the "people respond to incentives" motto aside, there are two primary problems in Easterly's evaluation of "panaceas". The first one is that he incorrectly discredits the crucial elements of development. To start with, Easterly believes that increases in investments -or machines- has no theoretical or empirical relationship with growth. However, we know no country that has developed without an increase in savings, investments, and machines. (Indeed, for Stiglitz, the East Asian "miracle" was simply a result of saving heavily and investing well). As such, the relationship between machines and economic growth needs a clarification: machines are necessary, though not sufficient, element of an economic growth. Yet Easterly does not think that machines are even a necessary component of growth. Testing this necessary argument, he finds that high rates of investments are not related to high rates of economic growth. The problem with Easterly's test, however, is that it is based on the assumption of a linear relationship between increases in the number of machines and economic growth. Yet no one would argue that "the more machines, the more growth" relationship holds forever. "Machinization" is not immune to the law of diminishing returns. The first couple machines increase the output enormously, later ones increase output less, and later ones more less, so much so that after a point increases in machines virtually decreases productivity because the return from investment in machines does not even matches its costs. Thus, in the absence of an improvement in technology, the relationship between the number of machines and growth is either log linear or curvilinear (`n' shape). (The classic case of high output growth without much productivity growth was that of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and early 1960s. Soviet economy was growing only because of massive mobilization of labor and huge rates of investment and total productivity was growing slowly, if at all. This implied that the growth had to slow down first, and die down later. This is indeed what happened.) For this reason, the relationship between machines and technology is a complementary one. Machines start economic growth and technological advancements maintain and further it. I do not understand therefore why Easterly mystifies the importance of technology for developing countries and downplays the equal importance of investment in machines for these countries. After al technology is applied on machines; or in other words, technological advancement means improvement of machines.
Education has long been treated as another "necessary but not sufficient" element of economic development. Easterly counters this argument as well. He argues that there is no empirical evidence for the positive relationship between investment in formal schooling and growth rates. His argument is based upon primary and secondary level education, however. I do not think that Easterly would still find a nonexistent relationship between post-high school education and growth. What is important here is that investment in technology, which Easterly views as the crucial element in growth, cannot take place without substantial investment in upper level education. In such a case, developing countries will continuously have to import their scientists and engineers from the developed world, which would perpetuate their dependence on rich countries. (Is it just a coincidence that the four Asian countries that have maintained astonishing levels of economic growth in the second half of the 20th century (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China) are also the top four countries that send most students to American universities?)
Finally, Easterly's conclusion on the irrelevance of population growth to economic growth is based on his incorrect interpretation of the historical relationship between the two. He argues that historically population growth and economic growth followed the same pattern in industrialized nations: both were slow until the 19th century, and then both accelerated at the same time. Thus, "it is hard to reconcile this fact with the idea that population growth is disastrous to growth," (p. 92). But the parallel trends in population and economic growth in the 19th-century Europe was simply due to economic growth's positive impact on social health. Economic growth meant less infant deaths, less diseases, and more disease treatment. This is exactly the case in today's poor countries. Therefore, the reason why economic growth and population increase go hand in hand in poor nations is not that population increase helps economic growth, but rather that economic growth causes population growth by reducing deaths due to curable diseases. (Interestingly, in the introduction of the book Easterly articulates why economic growth is important for poor countries: "Poverty is not just low GDP; it is dying babies, starving children, and oppression of women and the downtrodden," (p. 15). I do not understand, therefore, why he fails to see that this is exactly why economic growth in poor societies has a population-increasing effect.) To me, population growth is detrimental to economic growth especially for countries that has low capital-to-labor and land-to-labor ratios. Population growth may not be harmful for nations who has high capital-to-labor ratio (e.g. Belgium) because they have enough resources to invest on each additional individual. Similarly, population growth might not be necessarily detrimental for countries with a relatively high land-to-labor ratio (e.g. Brazil), for they can employ new members at least in the agricultural sector. But for a country like Bangladesh, which has low capital-to-labor as well as low land-to-labor ratio, population growth harms growth in two ways. First, it increases the number of mouths that are to be fed with the scarce capital; second, it depresses the wage down by increasing demand for the already scarce jobs.
I agree with Easterly that none of these factors are "panaceas"; nevertheless, they are essential elements of growth policies in developing countries.
To me, the fundamental problem in Easterly's approach to economic development is his misreading of history and his failure to understand the dynamics of a capitalist growth. Easterly attributes rich countries' richness to their technological advancement and implementing right governmental policies. This approach has two inexcusable problems: first, it assumes that all countries can be rich if they employ right policies; second, it assumes that development is a national phenomenon. Like most economic liberals, Easterly shares Rostow's (1959) naïve belief that development has a path to be followed and "any and every" country that follows this path will become a rich country. This argument is simply against the scarcity of vital resources of the world. Today each inhabitant of the North consumes ten times as much energy, nineteen times as much aluminum, fourteen times as much paper, and thirteen times as much iron and steel as someone in the South. Thus, it would take ten planets the size of this one for poor countries to consume as much as rich ones do (Galeano 2000, p. 216). Given the scarcity of vital resources, what poor nations can achieve at most is to alleviate (or maybe eliminate) poverty, not to get rich. And even this cannot be done with their own efforts solely.
A related problem in Easterly's approach is its negligence of the relationship between economic and political power in the world (well, according to Gilpin, this is a common problem among economists). Thanks to its richness, the West (led by the US) enjoys economic, political, and military hegemony over the rest of the world. Any threat to this hegemony will preoccupy the Western countries. The US has already started to preoccupy with the Chinese economic growth, even though Chinese GDP per capita is still around $1000 only. How would be the power relations in a world in which Brazil, India, Nigeria, Indonesia, and China had GDP per capita levels above $10000? Would the powerful countries of the world welcome such a world? Interestingly, Easterly fails to apply his motto onto world politics: What "incentives" does G-7 have in the enrichment of poor countries?
Great Themes and Practical Views.......2007-01-12
I was impressed with Easterly's objective viewpoint as well as his clarity of expressive economic ideas. It was great to read about historical progress on the poverty of nations and what ideas have not worked in the past. It is a great broad overview and it is presented in a very orderly and easy to understand way. I was entertained as I read as well with his personal experiences, metaphors and humor.
It is a good educational read.
Fresh Approach.......2006-11-03
The setting and structure are atypical and a sense of humor is added for enjoyable reading. More important there is an element of hope for the dismal science.
Book Description
The authors address the issue of competitiveness in the developing world. Using the Colombian cut-flower industry as a backdrop (and drawing from a variety of industries in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Peru), they identify seven core elements of the failed model of competitiveness in which much of the developing world appears to be trapped. These patterns include an over-reliance on basic production factors and natural resources, inadequate supplier and distributor relationships, and insufficient tools for performing customer and competitor analysis. In a challenge to conventional economic development theory and practice, Fairbanks and Lindsay propose an action framework, emphasizing strategic and microeconomic approaches to growth, based on a partnership between the public and private sectors. The authors argue that only by identifying common goals, committing to a long-term perspective, investing in human resources, and assigning new leadership roles for businesspeople and policymakers alike, can developing countries break out of the vicious cycle of underperformance.
Customer Reviews:
Making True Revolution with Success.......2001-05-06
This is a complex and multidimensional book on many levels. This book is not really about what governments can do to help their countries develop. In fact, the word "development" hardly appears. It is about the unproductive relationship between government and the private sector that wastes time and other valuable resources in emerging economies. The authors hold both parties responsible for moving on.
As stated on the first page, Simon Bolivar's epitaph reads, "Whomsoever has worked for a revolution has plowed the sea." Meant by Bolivar to convey despair and the heartbreak of failure, these words are transformed by the authors who have maintained a sense of optimism and good humor throughout their own experiences in the rugged world of transformation consulting. The Introduction, the book's first substantive chapter, is a cautionary tale of the Colombian flower industry, that prospered globally for decades, but later declined and has not yet recovered. Through this "case", seven patterns of firm behavior that inhibits economic agility are identified. The first seven chapters of the book elaborate on these patterns, wonderfully illustrated with other cases (Peru's fishmeal and Bolivia's soy industry, for example). The authors describe a sort of bratty adolescence that traps companies and industries in emerging economies. Chapters 8 and 9 are a fine application of micro principles around the theme of strategy, again focused on the firm. The authors advocate the old-fashion but culture shattering step of focusing on customers, costs and competitors in order to guide and inform decisions about strategy, positioning and productivity. They offer information and learning as a way for firms to experience a "coming of age" in the competitive sense. The role of government in promoting economic transformation is not touched until Chapter 10, two-thirds of the way through the book. Chapter 10-12 are probably where readers will find the book a bit frustrating and repetitive. Not enough time is spent defining what the authors mean by "steering mechanisms". This is undoubtedly because the book assumes the reader already knows alot. Chapter 10 mostly illustrates shifts in steering mechanisms using the case of a wall-bouncing Bolivian government. Chapter 11 is almost singular for business books - there is an actual discussion of research and the presentation of data. It is a practitioners discussion, however, not an academic one, so potential readers can relax.
B-school vets and other warriors will recognize alot here as an application of Michael Porter's "diamond model" from his Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) and indeed, Porter writes the Foreword. The authors have extended the "diamond's" scope and reach, but their own model is not apparent until the end, Chapter 13. Their model for bringing about industry level change appears in the book's final four pages.
This book's protagonists are leaders in firms, industries and government, as well as their mindsets and actions. The word "leader" might be interpreted by some readers as "government" but this is not accurate. This book does do something extraordinary, however. On one hand, it is a blood and guts how-to on diagnosing and fixing the self-defeating decision making of firms in the emerging world. On the other hand, the conceptual framework within which political economics is practiced, debated, planned and evaluated is updated to reflect the fact that competitive advantage, not absolute or comparative advantage will increasingly referee the win/loss columns in the global economy. The context of political economics is addressed entirely without reference to ideology. This might strike some as soulless or arrogant. It might strike others as about time.
The writing in this book reflects a highly integrated understanding of business and economics, as well as intimate and affectionate knowledge of Latin American business and classical culture. Also apparent are the authors very fine liberal arts backgrounds, years on the road and a sense of mirth. Finally, these authors clearly know their work and thinking is culture altering and socially revolutionary. Their obvious goal is to realize the dream of Bolivar by capturing the minds of today's business, industry and government trend setters. While I would say their hearts are definitely not bleeding nor on their sleeves, their drive and focus are more uplifting than anything I have read or seen in a long time.
Insightful but too wordy.......2000-05-09
A very insightful book about how countries as a whole compete in the world economy. It presents several interesting ideas about relative competitive strengths & weaknesses of nations and the source of these competitive positions.
The book falls short on readability. The authors could have conveyed the same message in half the pages. Often, I found myself skipping entire paragraphs and sections to find the ideas burried in all the verbiage.
I still rate it a 4 because of the importance of the topic covered and the insights contained in the book.
A refreshing guide to strategy in third world economies.......1999-03-09
This book is a surprise. Very fun to read, very insightful and plenty of new ideas for doing business from emerging economies.
terrific read.......1999-03-07
I found the book a terrific read. I think it is huge task for an developing country to grow out of the habits of being follower. It is not impossible, but the probablity is low, especially since most of these countries are not technologically savvy.
The book gives anyone from an emerging country some hope that they too can compete in this quickly advancing world.
Cheers
Victor
terrific read.......1999-03-07
I found the book a terrific read. I think it is huge task for an developing country to grow out of the habits of being follower. It is not impossible, but the probablity is low, especially since most of these countries are not technologically savvy.
The book gives anyone from an emerging country some hope that they too can compete in this quickly advancing world.
Cheers
Victor
Book Description
The effect of demography on economic performance has been the subject of intense debate in economics for nearly two centuries. In recent years opinion has swung between the Malthusian views of Coale and Hoover, and the cornucopian views of Julian Simon. Unfortunately, until recently, data were too weak and analytical models too limited to provide clear insights into the relationship. As a result economists as a group have not been clear or conclusive. This volume, based on a collection of papers that heavily rely on data from the 1980s and 1990s and on new analytical approaches, sheds important new light on demographic-economic relationships, and it provides clearer policy conclusions than any recent work on the subject. In particular, evidence from developing countries throughout the world shows a much clearer pattern in recent decades than was evident earlier: countries with higher rates of population growth have tended to see less economic growth. An analysis of the role of demography in the "Asian economic miracle" strongly suggests that changes in age structures resulting from declining fertility create a one-time "demographic gift" or window of opportunity, when the working age population has relatively few dependants, of either young or old age, to support. Countries which recognize and seize on this opportunity can, as the Asian tigers did, realize healthy bursts in economic output. But such results are by no means assured: only for countries with otherwise sound economic policies will the window of opportunity yield such dramatic results. Finally, several of the studies demonstrate the likelihood of a causal relationship between high fertility and poverty. While the direction of causality is not always clear and very likely is reciprocal (poverty contributes to high fertility and high fertility reinforces poverty), the studies support the view that lower fertility at the country level helps create a path out of poverty for many families. Population Matters represents an important further step in our understanding of the contribution of population change to economic performance. As such, it will be a useful volume for policymakers both in developing countries and in international development agencies.
Book Description
Microfinance investment funds are a recent development that will grow in importance. These funds expand the range of opportunities for financing microfinance institutions, enabling them to offer greater outreach and diversity of products for microentrepreneurs and small businesses. Microfinance now spans the range of finance, from the most simple enterprise to the complexity of capital markets. KfW actively promotes microfinance investment funds and other activities that facilitate the growth of microfinance. This book is an expression of KfW's role as information broker and trend setter. The authors who contributed to this collection offer a comprehensive range of perspectives and themes related to microfinance investment and its promotion.
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Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction (World Bank Policy Research Report)
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Land Law Reform: Achieving Development Policy Objectives (Law, Justice, and Development)
ASIN: 0821350714 |
Book Description
This volume synthesizes insights from the vast literature on land policy. It evaluates the implications of these insights for development policy, taking due account of actual experiences in policy implementation, and suggests ways to design land policies that promote growth as well as poverty reduction.
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Land is a key component of the wealth of any nation. Throughout history, virtually all civilizations have spent considerable time defining land rights and establishing institutions to administer them. Well-defined, secure, and transferable rights to land are crucial to development efforts. In developing countries, most land is used for agricultural production, a mainstay of economic sustenance. The possession of land rights also typically ensures a baseline of shelter and food supply and allows people to turn latent assets into live capital through entrepreneurial activity. Once secure in their land rights, rural households invest to increase productivity. Moreover, the use of land as a primary investment vehicle allows households to accumulate and transfer wealth between generations. The ability to use land rights as collateral for credit helps create a stronger investment climate and land rights are thus, at the level of the economy, a pre-condition for the emergence and operation of financial markets. Property rights to land are one of the cornerstones for the functioning of modern economies. This book looks first at the historical, conceptual, and legal contexts of property rights to land. It then considers aspects of land transactions, including the key factors affecting the functioning of rural land markets. Finally, it explores the scope and role of governments and land policy formation and discusses ways in which developing countries can establish land policy frameworks that maximize social benefit.
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Fiscal Policy for Development: Poverty, Reconstruction and Growth (Studies in Development Economics and Policy)
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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ASIN: 0230004997 |
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Fiscal policy is critical to the development of poor countries. Public spending on pro-poor services and public goods must be increased, tax revenues must be mobilized, and macro-economic stabilization must be achieved without inhibiting growth, poverty reduction and post-conflict reconstruction. This book provides both a comprehensive and balanced guide to the current policy debate and new results on the development impact of fiscal policies. It is essential reading for students of development economics as well as all those seeking to improve policy-effectiveness.
Book Description
This wide-ranging and innovative book synthesises the findings of a major international study of the political economy of poverty, equity, and growth. It is based primarily on analytical economic histories of 21 developing countries from 1950 to 1985, but also takes account of the wider literature on the subject. The authors take an ambitious interdisciplinary approach to identify patterns in the interplay of initial conditions, instiuttions, interests, and ideas which can help to explain the different growth and poverty alleviation outcomes in the Third World. Three different types of poverty are distinguished, based on their causes, and a more nebulous idea of equityin contrast to egalitarianismis shown to have influenced policy. Since growth is found to be the major means of alleviating mass structural poverty, much of the book is concerned with discovering explanations for policies which are found to be the most important influences on the proximate causes of growth. Lal and Mynt also consider the available evidence on the role of direct transferspublic and privatein alleviating destitution and conjunctural poverty. The Political Economy of Poverty, Equity, and Growth develops a novel framework for the comparative analysis of different growth outcomes. This framework distinguishes between the different relative factor endowments of land, labour, and capital, and between the different organizational structures of pesent versus plantation and mining economies. It also differentiates between the polities of 'autonomous' and 'factional' states in the countries studied, breaking the analysis down into further typological subdivisions and providing important new insights into the differing behaviour of economies that are rich in natural resources and those with abundant labour. These insights constitute a richer explanation for the divergent developmental outcomes in East Asia compared with Latin America and Africa. The evidence collated is used to argue for the continuing relevance of the classical liberal viewpoint on public policies for development, and to show why, even so, nationalist ideologies are likely to be adopted and lead to cycles of interventionism and liberalism. The evidence is also used to provide an explanation for the surprising current worldwide Age of Reform.
Customer Reviews:
New insight on economic growth and reduction of poverty.......2000-05-30
This an important book for international political economists, who today are focussed on poor nations' "failure to develop," and the persistence of poverty. Lal and Myint have gathered the results of studies of 16 poor countries. The studies were designed by the World Bank, and focussed on the question of whether successful growth reduces poverty or leaves the poor behind. An encouraging finding, summarized in Chapter 10, is that successful economic growth does improve the welfare of the poor, and the failure of economic growth deepens poverty. Other findings related to income inequality, social welfare spending, and social safety-nets are drawn from the 16 studies. The findings give a solid base from which to debate left-right policy positions on poverty elimination. The data and detail in this book make it ideal for an international political economy classroom, but perhaps not for the casual reader.
Book Description
In this book Ernest Wilson provides a clear, nuanced analysis of the major transformations resulting from the global information revolution. He shows that the information revolution is rooted in societal dynamics, political interests, and social structure. Using the innovative Strategic ReStructuring (SRS) model, he uncovers links between the big changes taking place around the world and the local initiatives of individual information activists, especially in developing countries. Indeed, Wilson shows that many of the structural changes of the information revolution, such as shifts from public to private ownership or from monopoly to competition, are driven by activists struggling individually and collectively to overcome local apathy and entrenched opposition to reform.
Wilson applies his SRS model to the politics of Internet expansion in Brazil, China, and Ghana to illustrate the real-world challenges facing policy-makers and practitioners. Examples of such challenges include starting Internet companies, reforming regulatory laws, and formulating NGO strategies for dealing with the digital divide. Wilson identifies the tremendous possibilities for innovation and advancement in developing countries while acknowledging the structural, institutional, and cultural constraints that work against their realization.
Book Description
The economics of growth has come a long way since it regained center stage for economists in the mid-1980s. Here for the first time is a series of country studies guided by that research. The thirteen essays, by leading economists, shed light on some of the most important growth puzzles of our time. How did China grow so rapidly despite the absence of full-fledged private property rights? What happened in India after the early 1980s to more than double its growth rate? How did Botswana and Mauritius avoid the problems that other countries in sub--Saharan Africa succumbed to? How did Indonesia manage to grow over three decades despite weak institutions and distorted microeconomic policies and why did it suffer such a collapse after 1997?
What emerges from this collective effort is a deeper understanding of the centrality of institutions. Economies that have performed well over the long term owe their success not to geography or trade, but to institutions that have generated market-oriented incentives, protected property rights, and enabled stability. However, these narratives warn against a cookie-cutter approach to institution building.
The contributors are Daron Acemoglu, Maite Careaga, Gregory Clark, J. Bradford DeLong, Georges de Menil, William Easterly, Ricardo Hausmann, Simon Johnson, Daniel Kaufmann, Massimo Mastruzzi, Ian W. McLean, Lant Pritchett, Yingyi Qian, James A. Robinson, Devesh Roy, Arvind Subramanian, Alan M. Taylor, Jonathan Temple, Barry R. Weingast, Susan Wolcott, and Diego Zavaleta.
Book Description
This book is part of a larger effort undertaken by the World Bank to understand the development experience of the 1990s, an extraordinary eventful decade. Each of the project¡¦s three volumes serves a different purpose. Development Challenges in the 1990s: Leading Policymakers Speak from Experience offers insights on the practical concerns faced by policymakers, while At the Frontlines of Development: Reflections from the World Bank considers the operational implications of the decade for the World Bank as an institution. This volume, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform, provides comprehensive analysis of the decade¡¦s development experience and examines the impact of key policy and institutional reforms of growth.
Economic Growth in the 1990s confirms and builds on the conclusions of an earlier World Bank book, The East Asian Miracle (1993), which reviewed experiences of highly successful East Asian economies. It confirms the importance of growth of fundamental principles: macro stability, market forces governing the allocation of resources, openness, and the sharing of the benefits of growth. At the same time, it echoes the finding that these principles translate into diverse policy and institutional paths, implying the economic policies and policy advice must be country-specific and institutional-sensitive if they are to be effective.
The authors examine the impact of growth of key policy and institutional reforms: macroeconomic stabilization, trade liberalization, deregulation of finance, privatization, deregulation of utilities, modernization of the public sector with a view to increasing its effectiveness and accountability, and the spread of democracy and decentralization. They draw lessons both from a policy and institutional perspective and from the perspective of country experiences about how reforms in each policy and institutional area have affected growth.
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"This book is part of a larger effort undertaken by the World Bank to understand the development experience of the 1990s, an extraordinary eventful decade. Each of the project's three volumes serves a different purpose. Development Challenges in the 1990s: Leading Policymakers Speak from Experience offers insights on the practical concerns faced by policymakers, while At the Frontlines of Development: Reflections from the World Bank considers the operational implications of the decade for the World Bank as an institution. This volume, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform, provides comprehensive analysis of the decade's development experience and examines the impact of key policy and institutional reforms of growth. Economic Growth in the 1990s confirms and builds on the conclusions of an earlier World Bank book, The East Asian Miracle (1993), which reviewed experiences of highly successful East Asian economies. It confirms the importance of growth of fundamental principles: macro stability, market forces governing the allocation of resources, openness, and the sharing of the benefits of growth. At the same time, it echoes the finding that these principles translate into diverse policy and institutional paths, implying the economic policies and policy advice must be country-specific and institutional-sensitive if they are to be effective. The authors examine the impact of growth of key policy and institutional reforms: macroeconomic stabilization, trade liberalization, deregulation of finance, privatization, deregulation of utilities, modernization of the public sector with a view to increasing its effectiveness and accountability, and the spread of democracy and decentralization. They draw lessons both from a policy and institutional perspective and from the perspective of country experiences about how reforms in each policy and institutional area have affected growth."
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