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Title: The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by William Easterly ISBN: 0-262-55042-3 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 08 August, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.26 (38 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: There are no easy answers to third world growth
Comment: For 5/6ths of the people of Earth, life is a daily struggle for basic needs: food, shelter, medicine. Infant mortality rates are high, women are oppressed, and individuals have limited opportunities to improve their lot.
William Easterly is a Senior Advisor in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. In his first book, he asks why trillion dollars of foreign aid to the countries of the "third world" since WWII have caused essentially no improvement in the quality of life for the people in these countries. I found the writing lucid and the many real stories of poverty and corruption both emotionally powerful and insightful.
Emphasizing a key mantra of economics -- people respond to incentives -- he details the long list of foreign aid tactics that have failed: capital investment (machines, factories, roads), education, birth control, loans, and loan forgiveness. Not that any of the tactics are bad, but rather they are ineffectual in a country lacking key social, political, and economic infrastructure.
Easterly then describes in detail the factors at play in driving growth: increasing returns (Leaks, Matches, Traps), creative destruction through technology, luck, governments kill growth, government corruption, and class and race conflicts.
Easterly shows that achieving economic growth is very difficult, but he does a great job of identifying the key systemic issues that poor countries must address.
Perhaps surprisingly, Easterly's model applies equally well to the economic disparities that exist within countries, even "rich" countries like the United States. The increasing returns model says that highly-skilled people will prefer to live and work with one another ("Matches"), as each of them will be more productive for being around other highly-skilled individuals. So this explains, for example, why areas like Silicon Valley, having once achieved critical mass, continue to grow. And why low-income inner-city and rural areas remain depressed ("Traps").
Rating: 4
Summary: No Easy Answers
Comment: An economist at the World Bank, Easterly looks back at the dismal economic record of the Third World over the last 40 years and distills lesssons to guide donors and policymakers in the future. He is at his best when dissecting failed policies such as population control or structural adjustment loans, which were embraced by development experts of the day but rested on faulty logic and flopped in practice. The rest of his book contains fascinating, nuanced discussions of how bad governance, "poverty traps," and plain bad luck (such as terms of trade shocks) can keep poor countries trapped in vicious cycles of poverty. Many myths are exploded, such as the belief that poor nations are destined to "catch up" with rich ones, or that international investment flows to capital-poor states in an effort to find higher returns. The text is clearly written and filled with wry humor. However, the failure to discuss how "Asian Tigers" such as Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan broke out of poverty and achieved industrial take off -- at one point, Easterly half-seriously cites "good luck" as a key explanation for their 30-year record of sustained economic growth! -- is a glaring hole and results in my rating of only four stars.
Rating: 5
Summary: debunking myths and the east asian tigers
Comment: While Easterly's book may seem targeted for economists, it's actually a book for everybody - it's needed to debunk myths that continue to prevail in policymaking. It's important that we understand what doesn't work and through a process of elimination of cure alls, we might eventually come to a solution.
As for one of the reviewer's question about why Easterly attributes a lot of the East Asian Miracle to "luck"... well, being an East Asian, we don't want to admit it. It's a lot about factor accumulation or basically saving really hard for a rainy day. But there's been low productivity from technology change and all this rampant growth has tapered off. So in a sense we are "lucky" that we could save like crazy under favorable world economic conditions then... But we came undone through too much suspicious government meddling, corruption, cronyism and thinking that we were invincible.
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Title: Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz ISBN: 0393324397 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando Desoto, Hernando de Soto ISBN: 0465016154 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 08 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Development As Freedom by Amartya Sen ISBN: 0385720270 Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday Pub. Date: 15 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David S. Landes ISBN: 0393318885 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study (Lionel Robbins Lectures) by Robert J. Barro ISBN: 0262522543 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 31 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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