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

Focusing on the development agenda of selected developed and developing countries, the contributors in this volume show that the varying degrees of success or failure in the programs of different countries are due to the way they deal with human factor development. Each essay clearly shows that a nation cannot achieve development if it continuously fails to develop its own national human factor. The contributors maintain that what different parts of the world, particularly Southeast Asia, call a development miracle is not a miracle at all.

Countries such as Japan and Singapore have...

In light of recent debates and studies on what political scientists call developmental authoritarianism and what some economists consider the East Asian model of economic growth, this book analyzes and evaluates Burma's economic performance under military management. It considers the relationship between democracy and economic growth, especially the thesis advanced by Asian authoritarian leaders that sociopolitical stability and discipline must be established as a prerequisite to economic development. Based upon empirical and historical facts, the book shows that the present military...

Here is a comprehensive development plan written as if vital communities, indigenous peoples, women, and the environment really mattered. This alternative type of development planning goes beyond statistics to incorporate the interests of the people that live in the community. As an experiment in development education and planning, one of the authors led a group of the country's leading undergraduates into the field in Ecuador to complete an empirically based study and to prepare an alternative set of recommendations and models. A clearly written book that offers new insights for...

East Asia's rapid economic growth and the crisis of 1997 have caught the world's attention. As the Asian miracle has turned to meltdown, the critical question has become whether growth will resume. Based on research and conferences at ICSEAD in Kitakyushu, Japan, this book brings together the work of Asian economic development experts. It considers the forces behind the East Asian growth miracle, the process of growth, the effect of saving, and the effect of foreign direct investment and multinationals. Taking an optimistic view, the authors conclude that rapid growth may resume in East...

From 1965 to 1990, the 23 East Asian economies grew faster than all other regions of the world. The high-performing economies of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia experienced low and declining levels of income inequality as well. The June 1997 financial crisis has challenged these economies. Many of the high-performing economies have experienced serious problems, including falls in currency and equity markets, significant slowdowns in international trade, and setbacks in economic growth. Emphasizing the role of government and the importance...

This practical, solutions-oriented approach to African development provides a detailed overview of the steps needed for industrialization. It includes lessons from the developed world as well as descriptions of key facets of Africa's current environment. It outlines the resources now available to the nations of Africa and gives examples, both broad and specific, from other successful development programs. Policy makers, business professionals, and academics and students will find the overview presented in this book comprehensive and practical.

The author examines agriculture,...

Development has alleviated poverty in many countries during the 50 years since the end of War World II, yet half of mankind remains poor; a fifth are very poor. Poverty is not a state of nature, but, as Stepanek shows, can be ascribed to manmade institutions that reflect self-serving and self-indulgent ideologies, poorly tested theories and policies, weak governments, and poverty alleviation programs that are questionably designed and poorly administered. Dr. Stepanek asserts that poverty cannot be alleviated without challenging all of its root causes, and he shows that well-designed...

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...