The Banking Crisis and Inequality
Tim Lankester
Volume 10, Number 1, 2009
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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
François Bourguignon on fifty years of economic development and the elusive quest for sustained growth
An interview with introduction by Brian Snowdon
Volume 9, Number 3, 2008, pages 123 - 176
François Bourguignon was Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, Development Economics, at the World Bank before taking up his current position as Director of the Paris School of Economics. He is one of the world’s leading economists in the field of economic growth and development, in particular ... Read more
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Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries
No consensus but plenty of solutions
Michael Chibba
Volume 9, Number 1, 2008, pages 197 - 200
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Three Cheers for the 'Progressive State'
Ben Friedman on the moral consequences of economic growth
An interview with introduction by Brian Snowdon
Volume 9, Number 1, 2008, pages 97 - 146
Ben Friedman is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading macroeconomists. His research and publications have focused on monetary and fiscal policy, and the key role that financial markets play in influencing how macroeconomic policies impact on aggregate economic activity. Professor Friedman’ ... Read more
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Leonardo Martinez-Diaz on Carol Lancaster, Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics
Volume 8, Number 4, 2007, pages 197 - 201
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The Role of the IMF in Low-Income Countries
Recent issues
Domenico Lombardi
Volume 8, Number 4, 2007, pages 191 - 195
The question of whether the IMF should effectively engage with its low-income member countries has recently generated a wide debate among development economists, policymakers, and advocates from nongovernmental organizations. This note elaborates on the important role that the IMF can play in its lo ... Read more
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How to Tackle Poverty
Economists are closing in on the answers
Diane Coyle
Volume 8, Number 3, 2007, pages 1 - 5
There has been an unprecedented political focus on economic development and poverty reductions since the Gleneagles Summit of 2005, yet it seems economists have been unable to agree on how to capitalise on the opportunity. Is more aid the solution? Or the problem? This article argues that, beyond th ... Read more
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Prospects for Commodity Exporters
Hunky Dory or Humpty Dumpty?
Paul Collier & Benedikt Goderis
Volume 8, Number 2, 2007, pages 1 - 15
Those low-income countries that export non-agricultural commodities are in the midst of a resource transfer. It is undoubtedly the biggest opportunity for transformative development that these societies have experienced, dwarfing both aid and previous commodity booms. To get it in proportion, in 200 ... Read more
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Shalendra D. Sharma on the Sachs–Easterly debate.
Can Massive Foreign Aid Eliminate Extreme Poverty?
Volume 8, Number 1, 2007, pages 245 - 253
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Book Review
David Bevan on Helping the Poor? The IMF and Low-Income Countries.
Volume 7, Number 1, 2006, pages 189 - 191
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Making Capitalism Work for Everyone
Raghuram Rajan & Luigi Zingales
Volume 7, Number 1, 2006, pages 1 - 10
There is a widespread belief that free markets do not benefit the common person, let alone the poor: they are only an instrument for the rich to get richer. Not only is this belief false, but in fact the opposite is true. Free markets are the single most important tools to eliminate poverty and spre ... Read more
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Measuring Global Poverty Right
Mission impossible?
M. G. Quibria
Volume 6, Number 4, 2005, pages 111 - 121
The international community is committed to millennium development goals which postulate a vision of global development that makes eliminating poverty and sustaining development the overriding objective of global development efforts. In the hierarchy of the MDGs, the first and foremost goal is to re ... Read more
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“Pity the Finance Minister”
Issues in managing a substantial scaling up of aid flows
Peter S. Heller
Volume 6, Number 4, 2005, pages 69 - 110
Substantial scaling up of aid flows will require development partners to address many issues, including the impact of higher aid flows on the competitiveness of aid recipients, the management of fiscal and monetary policy, the delivery of public services, behavioral incentives, and the rate of growt ... Read more
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A Global Compact to End Poverty
Jeffrey Sachs on stabilisation, transition and weapons of mass salvation
An interview with introduction by Brian Snowdon
Volume 6, Number 4, 2005, pages 11 - 68
Brian Snowdon presents the text of a two-hour interview conducted with Jeffrey D. Sachs of Columbia University—a wide-ranging discussion relating to Professor Sachs’s work over the past thirty years on macroeconomic stabilisation, the economics of transition, and several important issues in the fiel ... Read more
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The Economics of Happiness
Insights on globalization from a novel approach
Carol Graham
Volume 6, Number 3, 2005, pages 41 - 55
The economics of happiness is an approach to assessing welfare that combines economists’ techniques with those of psychologists, and relies on more expansive notions of utility than does conventional economics. Research based on this approach highlights the factors—in addition to income—that affect ... Read more
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Measures of Progress and Other Tall Stories
From income to anthropometrics
John Komlos & Brian Snowdon
Volume 6, Number 2, 2005, pages 87 - 135
How should progress be measured? Today, economists and economic historians have available a rich array of data for a large number of countries on which to base their response to this important question. The need for alternative measures of the standard of living is particularly important for economi ... Read more
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Rethinking Development Effectiveness
Facts, issues and policies
M. G. Quibria
Volume 6, Number 1, 2005, pages 101 - 117
This article reviews some recent research on aid effectiveness. An important
finding of this research is that foreign aid has been much more effective than is
generally presumed. It also suggests that the current aid allocation policy of
development agencies, based on selectivity, has a fragile e ... Read more
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Responsible Growth to 2050
Kirk Hamilton & Ian Johnson
Volume 5, Number 4, 2004, pages 33 - 51
At plausible rates of growth in population and income per capita, world GDP in
2050 could be four times what it is today. This paper considers the benefits this
growth can provide, the risks that it presents, and the building blocks required to
achieve it. The authors argue that “business as usua ... Read more
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The Health and Wealth of Africa
David E. Bloom & David Canning
Volume 5, Number 2, 2004, pages 57 - 81
Among Africa’s problems, chronic poverty and poor health stand out. Traditional
development thinking has maintained that health improvements are a
consequence of income growth. But new evidence shows that investing in health,
with the aid of the international community, could make a big differenc ... Read more
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International Aid
Experience, prospects and the moral case
Tim Lankester
Volume 5, Number 1, 2004, pages 17 - 39
This article describes the main reasons why aid has not been as effective at
addressing the world’s poverty problem as it could have been: lack of will on the
part of donors, inadequate policies and governance on the part of recipients, and
a lack of understanding of development and of how aid wo ... Read more
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The Undivided City
James D. Wolfensohn
Volume 4, Number 3, 2003, pages 1 - 13
Two billion people are set to flood into the already crowded cities of the
developing world over the next twenty-five years, mainly to live in the squalid
surroundings of a slum or a shanty town and to endure the consequent effects of
social injustice and division. James Wolfensohn, President of ... Read more
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The Impact of Globalization on Rural Poverty
Alexander Sarris
Volume 4, Number 2, 2003, pages 143 - 162
The paper first reviews the meaning and causes of globalization. It indicates that
globalization is not a new phenomenon in history, but the current phase seems to
have new elements that did not exist previously. Regarding the consequences of
the various aspects of globalization at the national l ... Read more
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More Aid—Making It Work for the Poor
Peter S. Heller & Sanjeev Gupta
Volume 3, Number 4, 2002, pages 131 - 146
This paper highlights the economic challenges that would be associated with a
successful effort by industrial countries to meet the goal of devoting 0.7 percent
of their GNP to official development assistance (ODA) to help poor countries. To
help achieve the Millennium Development Goals, enhanced ... Read more
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The Debt-Relief Initiative for Poor Countries
Good news for the poor?
Gustav Ranis & Frances Stewart
Volume 2, Number 3, 2001, pages 111 - 124
This paper reviews the new debt-relief initiative for Highly-Indebted Poor
Countries (HIPCs) designed to reduce the debt burden of potentially 36 poor
countries. It finds that the HIPC initiative is not likely to make a major
contribution to the problems of the world’s poor. It offers limited and ... Read more
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Global Income Inequality
Beliefs, facts and unresolved issues
Arne Melchior
Volume 2, Number 3, 2001, pages 87 - 108
While several international organisations have argued that income gaps between
countries have increased during the last decades, the opposite conclusion is
obtained if countries are weighted according to their population size, and if price-level-adjusted income data are applied. Inequality measure ... Read more
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Child Labour
Theory, policy and evidence
Saqib Jafarey & Sajal Lahiri
Volume 2, Number 1, 2001, pages 69 - 93
The purpose of this paper is to pull together the emerging theoretical and
empirical literature on the economics of child labour, and to draw out the
underlying commonalities between various contributions in this field. In doing
so, the authors also identify various policy options and their relat ... Read more
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Hardship and Happiness
Mobility and public perceptions during market reforms
Carol Graham & Stefano Pettinato
Volume 1, Number 4, 2000, pages 73 - 112
This paper focuses on an age-old puzzle: why some societies peacefully tolerate high levels of inequality and others do not. The authors posit that opportunity and mobility over time are as important as current distributions are to the explanation. Assessments of past mobility and future expectatio ... Read more
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False Attack
Misrepresenting the Human Development Report and misunderstanding the need for rethinking global governance
Richard Jolly
Volume 1, Number 3, 2000, pages 1 - 15
In this rejoinder to David Henderson’s article "False Perspective: the UNDP view of the world" (World Economics Vol 1 No 1 January-March 2000), Richard Jolly, former special adviser to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, argues that Henderson’s criticisms of the UND ... Read more
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The US “Underclass” in a Booming Economy
Richard B. Freeman
Volume 1, Number 2, 2000, pages 89 - 100
The main failure in the US economy in the 1980s through the mid 1990s was its inability to distribute the gains of economic growth to the bulk of the population. The traditional “rising tide lifts all boats” link between economic growth and poverty seemed broken, creating a large seemingly permanent ... Read more
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Understanding Labour Market Institutions
Gilles Saint-Paul
Volume 1, Number 2, 2000, pages 73 - 87
Labour market rigidities are often considered to be responsible for high unemployment in Europe. This paper outlines a theory explaining why they may be supported by the political system, and where their support comes from.
Labour market rigidities are likely to arise as the outcome of microeconomi ... Read more
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Poles Apart
Labour market performance and the distribution of work across households
Paul Gregg, Kirstine Hansen & Jonathan Wadsworth
Volume 1, Number 2, 2000, pages 55 - 72
Analysis of labour market performance using individual level data can reach radically different conclusions to those provided by a household-based analysis, using the same source of information. In Britain and other OECD countries the number of households without access to earned income has grown de ... Read more
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Welfare-to-work and the New Deal
Richard Layard
Volume 1, Number 2, 2000, pages 29 - 39
Welfare-to-work is on trial in many countries. In Britain it has become the
government’s most important policy for lowering unemployment and expanding
labour supply. But can it work? And what lessons does Britain’s experience
provide for other countries? This paper argues that whilst ... Read more
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False Perspective: The UNDP View of the World
David Henderson
Volume 1, Number 1, 2000, pages 1 - 19
Despite some searching and unanswered criticisms of its treatment of statistical evidence, the UNDP Human Development Report has become established as a widely-quoted and influential survey of the world scene. The 1999 Report, reviewed here, focuses on ‘globalization’. This is described as a dominan ... Read more
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