Making Poor Nations Rich

by Powell, Benjamin

• ISBN13: 9780804757324
• ISBN10: 0804757321
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-08
• Publisher: INGRAM

Summary

Why do some nations become rich while others remain poor? Traditional mainstream economic growth theory has done little to answer this question--during most of the twentieth century the theory focused on models that assumed growth was a simple function of labor, capital, and technology. Through a collection of case studies from Asia and Africa to Latin America and Europe,Making Poor Nations Richargues for examining the critical role entrepreneurs and the institutional environment of private property rights and economic freedom play in economic development. Making Poor Nations Richbegins by explaining how entrepreneurs create economic growth and why some institutional environments encourage more productive entrepreneurship than others. The volume then addresses countries and regions that have failed to develop because of barriers to entrepreneurship. Finally, the authors turn to countries thathavedeveloped by reforming their institutional environment to protect private property rights and grant greater levels of economic freedom. The overall lesson from this volume is clear: pro-market reforms are essential to promoting the productive entrepreneurship that leads to economic growth. In countries where this institutional environment is lacking, sustained economic development will remain illusive.

Author Biography

Benjamin Powell is Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute and Assistant Professor of Economics at San Jose State University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Foreword	p. xi
Contributors	p. xix
Acknowledgments	p. xxiii
Introduction	p. 1
Institutions and Entrepreneurship
Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations Are Rich, and Others Poor	p. 25
Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth	p. 54
Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive	p. 79
Economic Freedom and Property Rights: The Institutional Environment of Productive Entrepreneurship	p. 112
Failures in Entrepreneurial Development
The African Development Conundrum	p. 137
The Case of Latin America	p. 189
Entrepreneurship or Entremanureship? Digging Through Romania's Institutional Environment for Transition Lessons	p. 223
Sweden's Slowdown: The Impact of Interventionism on Entrepreneurship	p. 250
Reform and Success in Entrepreneurial Development
China's March Toward the Market	p. 283
India: The Elephant in the Age of Liberation	p. 309
Economic Freedom and Growth: The Case of the Celtic Tiger	p. 342
Why Have Kiwis Not Become Tigers? Reforms, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Performance in New Zealand	p. 364
Look, Botswana: No Hands! Why Botswana's Government Should Let the Economy Steer Itself	p. 396
Index	p. 429
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