Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Development - Economic Development

Bowditch refuses to see African nations as basketcases on a continent of despair; instead, he examines Ghana as a country of potential opportunity in an economically emerging continent. He explores a new generation of issues around the connection between cultural values and behavior to provide international investors, Ghanaians, and others with a better understanding of the Ghanaian--and African--business environment.

Drawing upon some seven years of living and working in Ghana, Bowditch provides several different contemporary vantage points on sub-Saharan Africa's first independent...

Development assistance, long seen as a giveaway to developing countries, is, according to Berrios' assessment, actually a giveaway to large for-profit U.S. contractors. Berrios shows that a small but influential number of contractors continue to be awarded most of the contracts, both in value and number, despite their average or substandard performance.

Berrios documents the commercial considerations that drive U.S. development assistance. The increasing delivery of development aid in the form of contracts has led contractors to increase their weight and influence on USAID's programs....

The conventional wisdom has it that a balanced budget is the height of economic rationality, that social security should be privatized, and that most adult welfare recipients could and should get jobs. All our social and economic problems, we are told, are due to too much government; if we only left the American free enterprise system alone, the free market would heal all that ails our society and lead to lasting prosperity. Challenging these widespread stereotypes and myths, this book starts with the fundamental theory underlying capitalist ideology, showing that even in theory an...

Despite strong U.S. and Canadian economies, economic development remains an important local governmental function, partly to alleviate the persistent poverty that plagues some areas and partly to compete with the activities of neighboring local governments. Those cities, metropolitan areas, rural regions, and states that do not plan effectively lose the battle for economic survival. Local economic development has become a complex and challenging field, with increasing numbers of planners specifically trained for the task. Providing a useful guide for planners and students of planning, this...

Providing adequate, accessible, and affordable housing is a major problem affecting many African countries. Focusing on the West African country of Ghana, Konadu-Agyemang explores the urban housing question in light of current development theories. He concludes that it would be naive to see Ghana's housing crisis primarily as a result of political instability or economic mismanagement. Instead, the author argues that economic and social problems in Africa are products of the structural distortions created by colonialism and the draining of African resources to European countries.

The...

American domestic and international economic policymaking is a sometimes bewildering mixture of economic expertise and political interests. Headlee elucidates the pivotal debates of the 2000-2001 economic policymaking cycle by walking readers through the major institutions and introducing the key actors involved. A section on domestic policy starts with a chapter on the state of the U.S. economy, followed by chapters on making fiscal policy, monetary policy, and labor policy. Each of these chapters on making policy is illustrated by case studies on Social Security reform, the Federal...

Placing the controversial globalization process in historical context, DeWitt brings this increasingly important topic to life through the experiences of the two most populous states of the Western Hemisphere--Brazil and the United States. Comparing their development processes from the Colonial Era to 1900, he highlights the dramatically different consequences that are incorporated into the world economy for these two states. Sharing similar experiences during the Colonial Era, the countries' internal differences and differing relationships with Great Britain, the economic superpower of...

Of the developing nations of East Asia, Indonesia came relatively late to liberalizing its trade and investment regime. Only in the mid-1980s, when it was clear that oil revenues alone would not suffice and that a new engine of growth was needed, did the country's government swing behind a systematic deregulation effort. Tariffs were cut, non-tariff barriers were lowered, foreign investment restrictions were reduced, export promotion incentives were enhanced, and various financial sector regulations were eased. All this combined to spark a labor-intensive export-led economic boom that was...

Economic matters entered a new phase of importance in the wake of the Cold War. Concerns within development-assistance efforts to the Third World have also shifted. The current macro-environment of development has been accompanied by a plethora of new concerns and methods, such as how to consider gender in development projects and how to develop participatory-centered projects. Yet no text has covered many of the new approaches and techniques related to development projects, including issues of participation, gender, and evaluation--until now. Hira and Parfitt bridge these serious gaps,...

Economic matters entered a new phase of importance in the wake of the Cold War. Concerns within development-assistance efforts to the Third World have also shifted. The current macro-environment of development has been accompanied by a plethora of new concerns and methods, such as how to consider gender in development projects and how to develop participatory-centered projects. Yet no text has covered many of the new approaches and techniques related to development projects, including issues of participation, gender, and evaluation--until now. Hira and Parfitt bridge these serious gaps,...

The success or failure of economic assistance programs is a shared responsibility of recipient countries and donors. The negative attitude about aid prevalent today underscores a perception the aid has failed. Critics often blame corrupt regimes, weak governments, or poor economic policies. However, the poor track record of aid is also due to donors' inability to allocate limited funds effectively and poor coordination of their aid efforts. Declining aid budgets have led to fundamental questioning of foreign aid's allocation and utility, while the apparent ineffectiveness of aid has shrunk...

Many scholars of sub-Saharan Africa agree that inward-oriented development policies have hampered economic development in the region. Quinn questions traditional explanations for the low economic growth levels of sub-Saharan African countries by showing that majority state ownership of enterprise is a sufficient condition for inward-oriented policies and that this variable is a better predictor of such policies than other current explanations in the development literature. Supporting his observations through compelling case studies, Quinn offers a major statement that will be of interest...

No scholar denies Mikhail S. Gorbachev's role in developing a new approach to Soviet socialism, but most writers emphasize the radical departure from traditional Soviet ideology that "perestroika" seemed to represent. This work presents "perestroika" as part of the continuum of European intellectual history. It examines the sources of Gorbachev's thinking and action in 19th-century thought, the development of Russian Marxism through the intellectual crisis at the turn of the 20th century, the pragmatic and philosophical challenges to the Marxist-Leninist paradigm, Stalinism and its...

Bonds closely examines the process of bipartisanship in the creation and passage of the Marshall Plan in 1947-48, as the Truman administration confronted the first Republican Congress since 1929. The significant effect of process on policy and the evolving Cold War is illustrated, offering new insights into that confrontation.

Employing extensive archival research, Bonds examines the reciprocal relationship of effect between domestic and international politics, which cannot be understood adequately without examining the process of making policy. As Bonds demonstrates, this is a messy...

Mbaku, Saxena, and their contributors examine the problems faced by Africa as it decides what to do to improve its ability to contribute to and benefit from the new globalization. Today, the continent stands at a crossroads; it must choose between joining the new global society and pursuing a process of internal self-reliance. The dilemma the continent faces is how to participate in and benefit from the new global economy as well as retain and also benefit from its emerging regional economic and political schemes.

The book is written by a group of highly skilled and committed...

A toolbox for accessing federal laboratory innovations and financing the acquisition of new technologies with corporate equity, this book is also a guide to understanding the expertise of specific government laboratories. Entrepreneurs can rapidly accelerate the growth of their companies and become more competitive by acquiring federal laboratory innovations. This book is an indispensable resource for those who want access to the latest breakthrough technologies, most of which can be traced to universities and federally funded laboratories. These taxpayer-funded idea factories can and...