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The political economy of development
This academic site promotes excellence in teaching and researching economics and development, and the advancing of describing, understanding, explaining and theorizing.
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On Planning for Development: Economic Growth and Productivity
From the Center for Economic and Policy Research

The Scorecard on Development, 1960-2010: Closing the Gap?
Mark Weisbrot and Rebecca Ray
April 2011 (Graphics revised for clarity; April 21, 2011)
Center for Economic and Policy Research
Scorecard on Development: 25 Years of Diminished Progress
September 2005, Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker and David Rosnick
This report looks at available data on economic growth and various social indicators — including health outcomes and education — in developing countries over the last 25 years. It is an updated version of CEPR’s report, “Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000,” published in 2001. (BP200509D)
En español
IMF Staff Discussion Note SDN/14/02

Redistribution, Inequality,and Growth

Jonathan D. Ostry, Andrew Berg, and Charalambos G. Tsangarides - February 2014

Economists are increasingly focusing on the links between rising inequality, crisis risk, and sustainable growth. Rajan (2010) underscores how inequality intensified the leverage and financial cycle, sowing the seeds of crisis, while Stiglitz (2012) stresses the role of politicaleconomy factors (especially the influence of the rich) in allowing financial excess to balloon ahead of the crisis. Berg and Ostry (2011) document the multi-decade and multi-country evidence that greater equality can help sustain growth. This work builds on a tentative consensus in the growth literature that inequality can undermine progress in health and education, cause investment-reducing political and economic instability, and undercut the social consensus required to adjust in the face of major shocks, and thus that it tends to reduce the pace and durability of growth (Persson and Tabellini, 1994; Easterly, 2007; Berg, Ostry and Zettelmeyer, 2012).

That equality seems to drive higher and more sustainable growth does not, in itself, support efforts to redistribute. In particular, inequality may impede growth at least in part because it calls forth efforts to redistribute through the fiscal system, efforts that themselves may undermine growth. In such a situation, even if inequality is bad for growth, taxes and transfers may be precisely the wrong remedy. While the literature on this score remains controversial, the notion of a tradeoff between redistribution and growth seems deeply embedded in policymakers’ consciousness. The negative effect of redistributive policies is indeed the central theme of Arthur Okun’s famous 1975 book on the tradeoffs between efficiency and equity and on the efficiency “leaks” that efforts to reduce inequality engender.

We nonetheless see an important positive conclusion from our look at the big picture. Extreme caution about redistribution—and thus inaction—is unlikely to be appropriate in many cases. On average, across countries and over time, the things that governments have typically done to redistribute do not seem to have led to bad growth outcomes, unless they were extreme. And the resulting narrowing of inequality helped support faster and more durable growth, apart from ethical, political, or broader social considerations.

International Monetary Fund - World Economic and Financial Surveys
World Economic Outlook (WEO)
April 2011
Smallest Tensions from the Two-Speed Recovery:
Unemployment, Commodities, and Capital Flows
See by chapters

©2011 International Monetary Fund
Full text

The world economic recovery continues, more or less as predicted. Indeed, our growth forecasts are nearly unchanged since the January 2011 WEO Update and can be summarized in three numbers: We expect the world economy to grow at about 4½ percent a year in both 2011 and 2012, but with advanced economies growing at only 2½ percent while emerging and developing economies grow at a much higher 6½ percent.
Earlier fears of a double-dip recession—which we did not share—have not materialized. The main worry was that in advanced economies, after an initial recovery driven by the inventory cycle and fiscal stimulus, growth would fizzle. The inventory cycle is now largely over and fiscal stimulus has turned to fiscal consolidation, but private demand has, for the most part, taken the baton.
Fears have turned to commodity prices. Commodity prices have increased more than expected, reflecting a combination of strong demand growth and supply shocks. Although these increases conjure up the specter of 1970s-style stagflation, they appear unlikely to derail the recovery. In advanced economies, the decreasing share of oil, the disappearance of wage indexation, and the anchoring of inflation expectations all combine to suggest there will be only small effects on growth and core inflation. The challenge will be stronger however in emerging and developing economies, where the consumption share of food and fuel is larger and the credibility of monetary policy is often weaker.


WP/03 Importance of Technological Innovation for SME Growth: Evidence from India
M. H. Bala Subrahmanya, M. Mathirajan, and K. N. Krishnaswamy - 2010

This paper probes the drivers, dimensions, achievements, and outcomes of technological innovations carried out by SMEs in the auto components, electronics, and machine tool sectors of Bangalore in India. Further, it ascertains the growth rates of innovative SMEs vis-à-vis non-innovative SMEs in terms of sales turnover, employment, and investment. Thereafter, it probes the relationship between innovation and growth of SMEs by
(i) estimating a correlation between innovation sales and sales growth,
(ii) calculating innovation sales for high, medium, and low growth innovative SMEs and doing a aggregate one-way ANOVA, and
(iii) ascertaining the influence of innovation sales, along with investment growth and employment growth on gross value-added growth by means of multiple regression analysis. The paper brings out substantial evidence to argue that innovations of SMEs contributed to their growth.

Economic Adversity and Entrepreneurship-led Growth: Lessons from the Indian Software Sector
Suma Athreye - 2010

It is commonly believed that the business environment in developing countries does not allow productive technology-based entrepreneurship to flourish. In this paper, we draw on the experience of Indian software firms where entrepreneurial growth has belied these predictions. This paper argues that the business models chosen by Indian firms were those that best aligned the country’s abundant labour resources and advantages to global demand. Many potentially higher value added opportunities struggled to attain success, but the qualitative value of experimental failures and the capability gaps they exposed was invaluable for collective managerial learning in the industry. Second, the paper also shows that the presence of growth opportunities and the success of firms stimulated institutional evolution to promote entrepreneurial growth. Last we show that the distinctive aggregate contribution of entrepreneurial firms was that they outperformed business houses and multinational subsidiaries in their more productive use of available capital resources whilst achieving similar levels of growth in output and employment.

China, India, Brazil and South Africa in the World Economy: Engines of Growth?
Deepak Nayyar - 2008

This paper attempts to analyse the economic implications of the rise of China, India, Brazil and South Africa, for developing countries situated in the wider context of the world economy. It examines the possible impact of their rapid growth on industrialized countries and developing countries, which could be complementary or competitive and, on balance, positive or negative. In doing so, it considers the main channels of transmission, to focus on international trade, investment, finance and migration. The essential question is whether, in times to come, these four countries could be the new engines of growth for the world economy. The answer is that rapid growth in China already supports growth elsewhere, so far primarily as a market for exports, while India and Brazil have the potential to provide similar support, but South Africa does not yet exhibit such a potential. In future, these countries could also provide resources for investment and technologies for productivity. The transformation and catch-up could span half a century or longer. Even so, rapid growth in these large emerging economies is already beginning to change the balance of economic power in the world.

World Productivity Database - UNIDO

This website lets you download indicators of productivity performance. Although it is primarily a website devoted to measures of total factor productivity (TFP), partial productivity measures are also available or can be derived from the existing data. You can download levels and growth rates, as well as ten-year forecasts of TFP for as many as 112 countries, from 1960 to 2000.
There are two tabs: Basic Selection and Advanced Selection. For the less experienced user of productivity data, please start with the former. Here, a pre-selected measure of productivity performance is provided that is standard among practitioners. More experienced users of productivity information may prefer to use the latter tab. Advanced Selection contains numerous measures of TFP based on various measurement methods, functional forms, specifications, constant and variable returns to scale and several measures of labour and capital. These variations can be combined in many different ways, all depending on preferences or applications for the use of the information.
It is recommended, first, to study the paper World Productivity Database: A Technical Description, which describes the input data used for the TFP calculations, the various measurement methods applied and how the forecasts were undertaken. Another useful preparation is the User Guide, describing how to operate the WPD website. It guides one through a sample routine, which can, then, be easily replicated.


Helmut Forstner, Anders Isaksson - 2002
Capital, Technology or Efficiency? Comparative Assessment of Sources of Growth in Industrialized and Developing Countries

This paper centers on a set of empirical findings about growth. It aims at presenting a comprehensive overview of aggregate and manufacturing growth between 1980 and 1990 in a sample composed of industrialized and developing countries. In this overview, the focus is on quantifying the respective contributions to growth made by capital accumulation and productivity change, as well as on a decomposition of the latter into the elements of technological change and change in technical efficiency. For these results, which were obtained by use of advanced techniques of productivity measurement, the paper also attempts a broad interpretation within the framework of a standard typology of countries.


Helmut Forstner, Anders Isaksson - 2002
Productivity, Technology, and Efficiency: an Analysis of the World Technology Frontier When Memory is Infinite

Using Data-Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a ‘world-technology frontier’ is constructed on the basis of data on 57 countries for the period 1980-90. Growth in total-factor productivity and its decomposition into technological progress and change in technical efficiency are analysed in this context. The paper shows that applying DEA in standard fashion results in a biased estimate of change in technical efficiency, due to an implausible loss of memory about production techniques. An amendment to DEA, called here Long-Memory DEA (LMDEA), is proposed in order to prevent technological regress and to achieve accurate measurement of technical-efficiency change. The application of LMDEA yields some new results that are largely in line with common perceptions of growth patterns.


Helmut Forstner, Anders Isaksson, Thiam Hee Ng - 2005
Productivity in Developing Countries: Trends and Policies

Using Data-Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a ‘world-technology frontier’ is constructed on the basis of data on 57 countries for the period 1980-90. Growth in total-factor productivity and its decomposition into technological progress and change in technical efficiency are analysed in this context. The paper shows that applying DEA in standard fashion results in a biased estimate of change in technical efficiency, due to an implausible loss of memory about production techniques. An amendment to DEA, called here Long-Memory DEA (LMDEA), is proposed in order to prevent technological regress and to achieve accurate measurement of technical-efficiency change. The application of LMDEA yields some new results that are largely in line with common perceptions of growth patterns.


Anders Isaksson and Thiam Hee Ng - 2006
Determinants of Productivity: Cross-Country Analysis and Country Case Studies

This paper compares the results of TFP determinants through two modes of analysis ― cross-country analysis of large sets of countries and country case studies. Both modes of analysis strongly agree on the most important TFP determinants, although they attach dissimilar weights to different variables. Agreement was obtained with respect to determinants such as human and physical capital, infrastructure, financial development, technology transfer through trade and absorptive capacity regarding knowledge creation, privatization and trade liberalization to achieve increased competition and economic institutions. Diverging views were evident in the case of structural change, health and geography. The paper concludes that a combination of both modes of analysis offers the most valuable tool for policy makers as well as for researchers.


Anders Isaksson - 2007
Determinants of Total Factor Productivity: A Literature Review

Based on micro, sectoral and macro studies, this review identifies several determinants that have an impact on TFP growth. Of these, education, health, infrastructure, imports, institutions, openness, competition, financial development, geographical predicaments and absorptive capacity (including capital intensity) appear to be the most important. Whereas most past papers reviewed only establish statistical associations and provide no causal direction, any policy discussion can only be indicative rather than directive. Nonetheless, these determinants suggest areas for policymaking. Examples include investment in human capital to enhance the absorptive capacity, which in turn, facilitates technology transfer, or trade reforms to increase access to foreign capital and intermediate goods.


Mats Graner, Anders Isaksson - 2007
Firm Efficiency and the Destination of Exports: Evidence from Kenyan Plant-level Data

Investigating the link between firm efficiency and exports in Kenyan manufacturing, the results show that exporters are more efficient than non-exporters, and relatively efficient firms self-select into exporting. An important new finding is that only for export markets outside Africa, firms must be efficient prior to entry; for those exporting within Africa this requirement seems less binding. Furthermore, the probability to export to other African countries increases if production is intense in physical and human capital, while for export activities outside Africa firm size is more important. Contrary to many other studies, it is also found evidence that export participation yields learning-effects. When testing the hypothesis that the main source of learning-effects is trade with developed countries (South-North), as opposed to trade with other developing countries (South-South), yet another new finding is that learning-effects only obtain in South-South trade. One can therefore conclude that controlling for the destination of exports importantly improves the understanding of the relationship between firm efficiency and exports.


Charles R. Hulten, Anders Isaksson - 2077
Why Development Levels Differ: The Sources of Differential Economic Growth in a Panel of High and Low Income Countries

Average income per capita in the countries of the OECD was more than 20 times larger in 2000 than that of the poorest countries of sub-Sahara Africa and elsewhere, and many of the latter are not only falling behind the world leaders, but have even regressed in recent years. At the same time, other low-income countries have shown the capacity to make dramatic improvements in income per capita. Two general explanations have been offered to account for the observed patterns of growth. One view stresses differences in the efficiency of production are the main source of the observed gap in output per worker. A competing explanation reverses this conclusion and gives primary importance to capital formation. We examine the relative importance of these two factors as an explanation of the gap using 112 countries over the period 1970-2000. We find that differences in the efficiency of production, as measured by relative levels of total factor productivity, are the dominant factor accounting for the difference in development levels. We also find that the gap between rich and most poor nations is likely to persist under prevailing rates of saving and productivity change. To check the robustness of these conclusions, we employ different models of the growth process and different assumptions about the underlying data. Although different models of growth produce different relative contributions of capital formation and TFP, we conclude that the latter is the dominating source of gap. This conclusion must, however, be qualified by the poor quality of data for many developing countries.


Anders Isaksson - 2007
Productivity and Aggregate Growth: a Global Picture

This paper describes the world in terms of income and productivity, levels and growth. It shows that the world is becoming increasingly unequal, in terms of income per worker, TFP and technical efficiency. Although some developing countries have managed to catch up with the world technology frontier, countries that were poor in 1960 generally stayed poor in 2000. Growth analysis tends to confirm the bleak picture and shows little indication of a forthcoming reversal of income polarization and divergence. Taken together, it appears that in early stages of development, countries rely on factor accumulation for their growth, but as they advance, productivity growth starts to contribute to output growth.


Economic and Social Research Council (UK) - 2009
Strategic Challenges
Global Economic Performance, Policy and Management

The collapse of confidence in the world financial system will shape the research agenda for a long time.The full extent of the damage to the global economy remains unclear. Governments have been forced to intervene in the economy, overturning the economic orthodoxy of the last 30 years.
The boundaries of public and private are being redrawn as new economic regimes are created.The recession puts renewed pressure on understanding the causes of poverty and what policies reduce it.Through research centres and grants, ESRC funded social scientists have already been active in these areas, giving us the opportunity to build on and deepen what is already known.



Economic Growth Resources
Penn World Data Tables
(University of Pennsylvania)
International Comparison Program
(The World Bank Group)
ICP Regional Results:
December 2007: Final results of the International Comparison Program for Asia.
June 2007: Final results of the International Comparison Program for South America.
March 2007: First Results of the International Comparison Program for Africa.

Macroeconomics and Growth
"Growth is the essential ingredient for sustained poverty reduction. The research program focuses on identifying the contribution of policies and institutional changes to the diversity in growth and aggregate economic performance around the world. Studies are organized around three broad themes: foundations of growth, macroeconomic stability and international finance, and governance and political economy."
Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade
(U.S. Government)
Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean
(IADB)
"INTAL is a unit of the Inter-American Development Bank. Since its beginnings INTAL has supported the Bank's regional integration strategy. Its activities are mainly focused on trade issues; regional integration and cooperation; technical assistance, specially directed to institutional strengthening and dialogue with civil society, including the private sector. INTAL also contributes to the exchange of background knowledge in the areas of regional integration and physical infrastructure. The Institute is currently the Secretariat for IIRSA Technical Coordination Committee. INTAL is part of the IDB Vice-Presidency for Countries and also coordinates activities with the Integration Sector, from the Vice-Presidency for Sectors and Knowledge.
Research and Data
(IADB)
Development Indicators
(OECD)
Statistics Portal
(OECD)
Central Banks on the WWW
(Bank for International Settlements)
Statistical Resources
(University of Michigan)
CIA World Factbook
(U.S. Government)

Silvio Boner and Martin Paldam (eds.)
The Political Dimension of Economic growth
The state and its institutions are crucial for economic development: for better and for worse. This insight informs this up-to-date and authoritative survey of new trends in growth economics and of the widely divergent economic performance of developing countries. The international team of contributors, including Vittorio Corbo and Mancur Olson, take up the challenge of pinning down the decisive role that the political dimension plays in economic growth.
Contents Overview: Part 1: The State and Development
-- Part 2: Volatility, Uncertainty, Institutional Instability and Growth
-- Part 3: Rent Seeking and Corruption
-- Part 4: Case Studies: Policies, Countries and International Organizations
-- Part 5: Constitutional and Administrative Reform
-- Part 6: Comments
The Editors: Silvio Borner is at the University of Basel, Switzerland and Martin Paldam is at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

From United Nations Development Programme
- Human Development Report 1996
Economic Growth and Human Development
The 1996 Report opens with a fundamental statement: "Human development is the end - economic growth a means." The Report argues that economic growth, if not properly managed, can be jobless, voiceless, ruthless, rootless and futureless, and thus detrimental to human development. The quality of growth is therefore as important as its quantity; for poverty reduction, human development and sustainability.
The Report concludes that the links between economic growth and human development must be deliberately forged and regularly fortified by skillful and intelligent policy management. It identifies employment as critical for translating the benefits of economic growth into the lives of people. But for this to happen, new patterns of growth will need to be developed and sustained well into the 21st century-- and new mechanisms must be developed to integrate the weak and the vulnerable into the expanding global economy.
To support economic growth as a means to enrich people's lives, the Report demonstrates why:
  • Over the past 15 years the world has seen spectacular economic advance for some countries - and unprecedented decline for others;
  • Widening disparities in economic performance are creating two worlds - ever more polarized;
  • Everywhere, the structure and quality of growth demand more attention - to contribute to human development, poverty reduction and long-term sustainability;
  • Progress in human development has mostly continued - but too unevenly;
  • New approaches are needed to expand and improve employment opportunities, so that people can participate in growth - and benefit from it; and
  • Economic growth is not sustainable without human development;

World Bank:
Global Economic Prospects 1998/99. A Summary
K. Marx/F. Engels:
Bourgeois and proletarians

         Marx, K.:
Capital, volumen 1
Smith, Adam:
The Wealth Of Nations
F. Engels:
Introduction to K. Marx's "Wage-labour and capital

          K. Marx:
Wage-labour and capital
M. Borrus and J. Stowsky:
Technology Policy and Economic Growth
Globalization, Growth, and Poverty. Building an inclusive world economy
The World Bank, 2002
The World Bank:
Data and Research

The Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC) seeks to increase understanding of development policies and programs by providing intellectual leadership and analytical services to the Bank and the development community. DEC is the research and data arm of the World Bank. 
Under the leadership of the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, DEC pursues three main business lines:
Development Research (research and knowledge creation)
Development Prospects (global monitoring and projections)
Development Data (international statistics, statistical capacity building and results monitoring)


University of California
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
BRIE: working papers

Books
Working papers
Discussion papers
An Old Consensus in the "New" Economy? Institutional Adaptation: Technological Innovation and Economic restructuring in Finland,
by Darius Ornston and Olli Rehn - 2005
dornsto1@uclink.berkeley.edu
A Second Finnish Transformation?
by John Zysman. Helsingin Sanomat (Helsinki), 2004.
johnz@socrates.berkeley.edu
Branding Identity and Tolerance
by Emilie Lasseron - 2005
elasseron@gmail.com
Creating Value in a Digital Era: Exploring the Experimental Economy (How Do Wealthy Nations Stay Wealthy?)
by John Zysman - 2005
johnz@socrates.berkeley.edu

Twin drivers, the global and the digital, constantly shift the sources of market advantage, forcing companies and countries to adapt. Firm internal functions suddenly become products to be bought in the market, products that generated premium prices suddenly become commodities, and the sources of differentiation for products and production processes evolve. It is not just that there is an increased pace of change, but that the market environment is inherently less predictable.
In a sense, this chapter asks the question of how wealthy nations stay wealthy amidst radical changes in competitive markets. In the conclusion I argue that traditional tools of strategy and policy analysis will not suffice. We have to consider the place of conscious experimentation in corporate and national adaptation.

Dis-embedding Welfare, or The Politics of Increasing Labor Market Flexibility in Europe
by Tobias Schulze-Cleven - 2005
tobysc@berkeley.edu
Harnessing a Trojan Horse: Aligning Security Investments with Commercial Trajectories in Cargo Container Shipping
by Jay Stowsky - 2005
stowsky@berkeley.edu
Health and Elderly Care Technology
by Jane Gingrich - 2005
jano20@socrates.berkeley.edu
Renegotiating Adjustment: Institutional Innovation and Economic Restructuring in Nordic Europe
by Dairus Ornston - 2005
dornsto1@uclink.berkeley.edu

Paul Krugman Web Pages:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Princeton University
The Atlantic Monthly Online Archive
United Nations:
The World Economy at the beginning of 1998
 
OECD: Online Working Papers
IMF: World Economic Outlook 1998
World Economic Outlook Databases
The World Economic Outlook (WEO) database is created during the biannual WEO exercise, which begins in January and June of each year and results in the April and September WEO publication. Selected series from the publication are available in a database format.
See also, the World Economic Outlook Reports

Institute for International Economics
Institute for International Economics. Working Papers
  Economics Working Paper Archives
Soros Foundations Network Web Site
 
International Economics Study Center
New Economics Foundation
Welcome to nef (the new economics foundation).
nef is an independent 'think and do' tank. We believe in economics as if people and the planet mattered.


USDA Library Economics and Statistics Server
The USDA Economics, Statistics and Market Information System (ESMIS) is a collaborative project between Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University and several agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The system contains nearly 2500 reports and datasets. These materials cover U.S. and international agriculture and related topics. Available titles include both current and historical data. Many of the current titles are available via email subscription.
Center For Economic Forecasting
Annual rate of growth -1960 to 1982- All countries
Annual rate of growth -1965 to 1991- All countries
The History Of Economic Thought
 
Inter-University Consortium For Political And Social Research

Data Use Tutorial

 
The natural edge project
New Economic Foundation - 2006
- Growth isn’t working: the uneven distribution of benefits and costs from economic growth
Growth isn’t working: the uneven distribution of benefits and costs from economic growth, shows that globalisation is failing the world’s poorest as their share of the benefits of growth plummet, and accelerating climate change hurts the poorest most.
The report, the first in nef's series of 'Re-thinking poverty' reports, reveals that the share of benefits from global economic growth reaching the world’s poorest people is actually shrinking, while they continue to bear an unfair share of the costs.   New figures show that growth was less effective at passing on benefits to the poorest in the 1990’s than it was even in the 1980’s- the so-called ‘lost decade for development’ - and an age of rising climate chaos will worsen their prospects. 
The report says that the notion that global economic growth is the only way of reducing poverty for the world’s poorest people is the self-serving rhetoric of those who already enjoy the greatest share of world income. It's authors argue that to achieve real progress we need to change in the way we think about and discuss economic issues, and break out of the confines of mainstream economic thinking.  We also need a shift in power relations, both globally and nationally, to move power from developed countries, elites and commercial interests to the majority of the world’s population, the poor.

From The World Bank - 2000
Beyond Economic Growth
Meeting the challenges of global development

What is development?, How can we compare levels of development?, What does it take to make development sustainable?
This book, which draws on data published by the World Bank, is addressed to students, teachers, and all those interested in exploring issues of global development. It encourages learners to seek their own solutions to development challenges by exploring and discussing a broad range of critical development issues.


From The World Bank Group
2005 International Comparison Program Global Purchasing Power Parities and Real Expenditures
2008 by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank

The 2005 International Comparison Program has produced estimates of the relative price levels of GDP and its principal aggregates for 146 economies. These purchasing power parities express the values of local currencies in relation to a common currency. In this report, the common currency is the U.S. dollar in 2005. When applied to the value of GDP or any component of GDP, the resulting values reflect the real value of consumption in each economy, corrected for differences in price levels and unaffected by transitory movements of exchange rates. This report provides PPPs and related measures for GDP, actual individual consumption by households, collective consumption of governments, and gross fixed capital formation. Additional tables provide the same data for several important components of the GDP (such as food, clothing, and housing, to name a few). The 146 economies account for more than 95 percent of the world’s population and 98 percent of the world’s nominal GDP. Table 8 lists the economies not included in the 2005 benchmark surveys along with estimates of their PPPbased GDP per capita (computed as described in the section “Estimation of PPPs for nonbenchmark economies”).

From the World Bank Group - 2000
Public Disclosure Authorized 20924 September 2000
The Quality of Growth 2000

The last decade of the 20th century saw great progress in parts of the world. But it also saw stagnation and setbacks, even in countries that had previously achieved the fastest rates of economic growth. These gaping differences and sharp reversals teach us much about what contributes to development. At the center is economic growth, not just its pace but—as important—also its quality. Both the sources and the patterns of growth shape development outcomes.

See also
IEG Working Paper 2008/6
The Quality of Growth: Fiscal Policies for Better Results
Ramón E. López, Vinod Thomas, and Yan Wang

In a recent report on middle-income countries, Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) found that countries and the World Bank Group have been relatively effective in the overarching priority of promoting growth and reducing poverty, but not in addressing rising inequality, governance and corruption, and environmental degradation. Similar issues were raised in IEG’s 2006 Annual Report on Development Effectiveness (ARDE). Recent reports from the United Nations and other multilateral agencies such as the Asian Development Bank also document the concerns about these aspects of distribution and sustainability connected with growth. Following the analysis in The Quality of Growth (Thomas et al. 2000), this report takes “quality of growth” to mean the type of economic growth that especially reduces extreme poverty, narrows structural inequalities, protects the environment, and sustains the growth process itself.
This is a challenging report on the development role of fiscal policy. It provides a multidimensional perspective on development—combining income growth, equity, and environmental quality. The report’s concerns are at the core of the development policy debate. The underlying analysis combines a variety of data and methodological approaches—from standard cross-country growth regressions to project data and country experiences. The report is intended to stimulate discussion in this critical area, particularly where the challenges from environmental and climate change problems, rising income inequality, energy subsidies in the face of rapidly rising energy prices, and widely uneven progress in combating poverty are becoming more serious.


From The World Bank: Public Disclosure Autorized WP2846
G. Datt and M. Ravaillon - 2002
Is India's economic growth leaving the poor behind?

There has been much debate about how much India's poor have shared in the economic growth unleashed by economic reforms in the 1990s. The authors argue that India has probably maintained its 1980s rate of poverty reduction in the 1990s. However, there is considerable diversity in performance across states. This holds some important clues for understanding why economic growth has not done more for India's poor. India's economic growth in the 1990s has not been occurring in the states where it would have the most impact on poverty nationally. If not for the sectoral and geographic imbalance of growth, the national rate of growth would have generated a rate of poverty reduction that was double India's historical trend rate. States with relatively low levels of initial rural development and human capital development were not well-suited to reduce poverty in response to economic growth. The study's results are consistent with the view that achieving higher aggregate economic growth is only one element of an effective strategy for poverty reduction in India. The sectoral and geographic composition of growth is also important, as is the need to redress existing inequalities in human resource development and between rural and urban areas.


From Biz/Ed
"A Web site for students and educators in business studies, economics, accounting, leisure, sport & recreation and travel & tourism."
GDP, GNP and economic growth

Interest Rate Transmission Mechanism »
Interactive Markets »
The Stock Exchange »
Maths in Business and Economics »

-----------------Background readings for business cycles:

Marx's analysis of capitalism. Excerpt and condensation of Chapter 6 from The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers,
by Robert L. Heilbroner, 7th ed., 1999,
available at www.rrojasdatabank.info/crisisdb/marxsanalysis.pdf

Boratav, Korkut, 2009,
A Comparison of Two Cycles in the World Economy: 1989-2007,
available at www.rrojasdatabank.info/crisisdb/World_Economycycles.pdf

Fujita, S., 2003,
Creative Destruction and Aggregate Productivity Growth, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia , 2003
available at www.rrojasdatabank.info/crisisdb/creativedestruction.pdf

Phillips, K.I. and J. Wrase, 2003,
Is Schumpeterian "Creative Destruction" a Plausible Source of Endogenous Real Business Cycle Shocks?
, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, 2003,
available at www.rrojasdatabank.info/crisisdb/buscycleschumpet.pdf

Rojas, R., 1997,
The History of Economic Thought [I], section on Marx’s methodology
available at www.rrojasdatabank.info/bothec02.htm

Rojas, R., 1985,
The making of a fractured society: the case of Latin America . The socioeconomic system of production, distribution, exchange and consumption.
Available at www.rrojasdatabank.info/foh7.htm


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Education for Sustainability
Postgraduate courses on
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- Part time distance learning
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- Come visit us at www.lsbu.ac.uk/efs

 
 

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