Leading Issues In Economic Development

by Meier, Gerald M.; Rauch, James E.

• ISBN13: 9780195179606
• ISBN10: 0195179609
• Edition: 8th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-01-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Completely updated and revised in this eighth edition, Leading Issues in Economic Development, covers the main issues in economic development through professional journal articles by leading scholars. These articles are edited to provide greater accessibility to an undergraduate audience andorganized thematically using overview essays along with explanatory notes and comments. This distinctive approach allows for a variety of perspectives while keeping the most important overall themes in sight.This extensive collection of articles and essays is prefaced with an introductory section that covers the measurement of development, recent economic performance of less developed countries, and the discipline of development economics. It also provides historical perspective on how the world dividedinto rich and poor countries and treatments of international trade, human resources, investment and finance, urbanization and the informal sector, agriculture, income distribution, political economy, as well as development and the environment.

Author Biography

Gerald M. Meier is Konosuke Matsushita Professor Emeritus of International Economics and Policy Analysis at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
James Rauch is Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, and Research Associate at the National Bureau for Economic Research.

Table of Contents

Exhibits	xiii
Preface	xv
Using This Book	xvii
World Map of Human Development Index	xviii
Introduction	1	(80)
Overview	1	(4)
Measuring Development	5	(29)
The Evolution of Measures of Development	12	(4)
Why Are Services Cheaper in the Poor Countries?	16	(4)
The Productivity and Factor Proportions Explanations Again	20	(7)
Income Poverty	27	(4)
Capabilities and Entitlements	31	(1)
Other Important Differences Between Developed and Less Developed Countries	32	(2)
Economic Performance of Less Developed Countries: The Recent Past	34	(39)
The Lost Decades: Developing Countries' Stagnation in Spite of Policy Reform 1980--1998	34	(7)
No Easy Answers, Yet All Is Not Lost	41	(4)
How Reform Worked in China	45	(7)
India Since Independence	52	(6)
The Impact of the Economic Reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean	58	(4)
Why Has Africa Grown Slowly?	62	(11)
The Discipline of Development Economics	73	(8)
Evolution of Development Economics	73	(3)
Classical Growth Theory	76	(1)
Development Economics as a Special Subject	77	(2)
New Endogenous Growth Theory	79	(2)
Historical Perspective	81	(52)
Overview: The Division of the World	81	(3)
The Spread of Economic Growth to the Third World: 1850--1980	84	(16)
State-owned Enterprises and Privatization	100	(1)
The Division of the World and the Factoral Terms of Trade	101	(5)
Why Not Export First?	106	(2)
The Lewis Model of the World Economy	108	(3)
Agricultural Productivity, Comparative Advantage, and Economic Growth	111	(3)
Income Elasticity of Demand for Food in the Matsuyama Model	114	(1)
Income Distribution, Market Size, and Industrialization	115	(2)
Minimum Market Size in the Murphy--Shleifer--Vishny Model	117	(1)
Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development Among New World Economies	118	(9)
Divergence, Big Time	127	(4)
Will the Poor Countries Catch Up?	131	(2)
International Trade and Technology Transfer	133	(50)
Overview	133	(7)
Trade
Natural Resource Abundance, International Trade, and Economic Growth	140	(4)
Import-substituting Industrialization and the Infant-Industry Argument	144	(2)
Typology in Development Theory: Retrospective and Prospects	146	(5)
An Exposition and Exploration of Krueger's Trade Model	151	(3)
Moving Up the Ladder and Changes in Relative Costs of Factors of Production	154	(2)
The Process of Industrial Development and Alternative Development Strategies	156	(7)
Getting Interventions Right: How South Korea and Taiwan Grew Rich	163	(7)
Tradeability of Intermediate Goods, Linkages, and Bottlenecks	170	(2)
Foreign Contact and Technology Transfer
Learning in International Production Networks	172	(3)
Technology Gaps Between Industrial and Developing Countries: Are There Dividends for Latecomers?	175	(3)
The Potential Benefits of FDI for Less Developed Countries	178	(2)
Trade as Enemy, Handmaiden, and Engine of Growth	180	(3)
Human Resources	183	(110)
Overview	184	(3)
Education	187	(25)
Three Views of the Contribution of Education to Economic Growth	187	(2)
Economic Impact of Education	189	(3)
Updated Estimates of Returns to Investment in Education	192	(1)
Ability Differences, Spillovers, and the Returns to Investment in Education	193	(1)
Creating Human Capital	194	(4)
Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia	198	(3)
Interpreting Recent Research on Schooling in Developing Countries	201	(5)
School Inputs and Educational Outcomes in South Africa	206	(6)
Health	212	(28)
Pharmaceuticals and the Developing World	218	(7)
Identifying Impacts of Intestinal Worms on Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities	225	(6)
Confronting AIDS	231	(9)
Population	240	(21)
The Size of the World's Population and the Size of the Average Family	247	(1)
Economic Approaches to Population Growth	248	(7)
Demographic Trends in Sub-Saharan Africa	255	(5)
The ``Demographic Dividend''	260	(1)
Gender and Development	261	(32)
Gender Inequality at the Start of the 21st Century	261	(14)
Missing Women	275	(9)
Women as Policy Makers	284	(9)
Investment and Finance	293	(38)
Overview: Investment and Finance: The Engines of Growth?	293	(4)
The AK Model	297	(3)
Is Fixed Investment the Key to Economic Growth?	300	(3)
Financial Development and Economic Growth	303	(6)
Taming International Capital Flows	309	(6)
Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?	315	(5)
The Microfinance Promise	320	(11)
Urbanization and the Informal Sector	331	(50)
Overview	331	(5)
Urban Growth and Infrastructure	336	(17)
Urban Growth in Developing Countries: A Demographic Reappraisal	336	(2)
Urban Primacy, External Costs, and Quality of Life	338	(5)
The Impact of the Privatization of Water Services on Child Mortality in Argentina	343	(10)
Rural-Urban Migration and the Informal Sector	353	(28)
Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor	355	(3)
A Model of Labor Migration and Urban Unemployment in Less Developed Countries	358	(2)
The Lewis Versus the Harris--Todaro View of Underemployment in Less Developed Countries	360	(5)
Wage Spillover and Unemployment in a Wage-Gap Economy: The Jamaican Case	365	(5)
Econometric Studies of Migration	370	(1)
Labour Market Modelling and the Urban Informal Sector: Theory and Evidence	371	(5)
The Role of the Informal Sector in the Migration Process: A Test of Probabilistic Migration Models and Labour Market Segmentation for India	376	(5)
Agriculture	381	(52)
Overview	381	(3)
Designing an Agricultural Strategy	384	(32)
Agriculture, Climate, and Technology: Why Are the Tropics Falling Behind?	388	(5)
Food, Hunger, Famine	393	(1)
Agricultural Development Strategies	394	(3)
Induced Technical and Institutional Change	397	(1)
The Green Revolution	398	(2)
Some Theoretical Aspects of Agricultural Policies	400	(4)
Rural Infrastructure	404	(3)
Prospects and Strategies for Land Reform	407	(9)
Microeconomics of the Rural Sector	416	(17)
The New Development Economics	416	(4)
Contractual Arrangements, Employment, and Wages in Rural Labor Markets: A Critical Review	420	(3)
The New Institutional Economics and Development Theory	423	(2)
Rural Credit Markets and Institutions in Developing Countries: Lessons for Policy Analysis from Practice and Modern Theory	425	(3)
A Survey of Agricultural Household Models: Recent Findings and Policy Implications	428	(2)
Supply Functions and Price Responsiveness	430	(3)
Income Distribution	433	(56)
Overview	433	(4)
Measurement of Income Inequality	437	(7)
The Impact of Development on Income Distribution	444	(21)
Economic Growth and Income Inequality	444	(5)
A Note on the U Hypothesis Relating Income Inequality and Economic Development	449	(1)
Economic Development, Urban Underemployment, and Income Inequality	450	(4)
The Informal Sector, Intraurban Inequality, and the Inverted U	454	(2)
Explaining Inequality the World Round: Cohort Size, Kuznets Curves, and Openness	456	(7)
Evidence for the Inverted U Across Countries Versus Within Countries over Time	463	(2)
The Impact of Income Distribution on Development	465	(8)
The Middle Class Consensus and Economic Development	465	(3)
Income Distribution, Political Instability, and Investment	468	(5)
Case Studies	473	(16)
Rising Inequality in China, 1981--1995	473	(8)
Falling Inequality in Rural Indonesia, 1978--1993	481	(8)
Political Economy	489	(92)
Overview	489	(5)
The (Proper) Role of the State in Less Developed Countries	494	(8)
Public Policy and the Economics of Development	494	(5)
Development Planning	499	(1)
Governing the Market	500	(2)
Rent Seeking and Government Failure	502	(34)
What Are Rents?	502	(3)
The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society	505	(3)
Complete Rent Dissipation Through Competitive Rent Seeking in the Harris--Todaro Model	508	(1)
The Relationship Between Rent Seeking and Corruption	508	(2)
The Regulation of Entry	510	(11)
Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions	521	(15)
State Capacity	536	(45)
Institutions and Economic Performance: Cross-Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Measures	536	(5)
The State as Problem and Solution: Predation, Embedded Autonomy, and Structural Change	541	(19)
Taking Trade Policy Seriously: Export Subsidization as a Case Study in Policy Effectiveness	560	(13)
Bureaucratic Structure and Bureaucratic Performance in Less Developed Countries	573	(8)
Development and the Environment	581	(52)
Overview: Environmental Problems in Less Versus More Developed Countries	581	(7)
Development and the Environment	588	(9)
The ``Environmental Kuznets Curve''	597	(2)
North--South Trade and the Global Environment	599	(2)
Empirical Studies of the Impact of International Trade on the Environment in Less Developed Countries	601	(2)
Deforestation and the Rule of Law in a Cross Section of Countries	603	(9)
Determinants of Pollution Abatement in Developing Countries: Evidence from South and Southeast Asia	612	(10)
Genuine Savings Rates in Developing Countries	622	(11)
Appendix: How to Read a Regression Table	633	(6)
Index of Selection Authors	639	(2)
Index	641