John O. Ifediora. In natural resource-dependent economies the prevalent and common understanding is that the principal natural resource that sustains the economy is endowed by nature to the citizens, and thus collectively owned. Its development, exploitation and maintenance are always and everywhere entrusted to the central government whose primary duty is the efficient governance of the affairs of the citizenry, and the assets held in trust on their behalf. It is in this sense that governments are entrusted with the husbandry of natural resources that sustain the nation, and judiciously apply revenues derived from such resources to human and…
Author: CASADE
Richard J. Evans. There are more ways of destroying a democracy than sending troops into the streets, storming the radio stations, and arresting the politicians, as Adolf Hitler discovered after the failure of his beer-hall putsch in 1923. Ten years later, on January 30, 1933, when he was appointed head of the German government, Hitler was the leader of the country’s largest political party, the National Socialists. Even five years earlier, in May of 1928, he’d been a political nobody, with the Nazis gaining less than 3 percent of the vote in national elections. But in the elections held in…
Edited by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou and Dilip Mookherjee. Understanding poverty and what to do about it, is perhaps the central concern of all of economics. Yet the lay public almost never gets to hear what leading professional economists have to say about it. This volume brings together twenty-eight essays by some of the world leaders in the field, who were invited to tell the lay reader about the most important things they have learnt from their research that relate to poverty. The essays cover a wide array of topics: the first essay is about how poverty gets measured.…
By Terry Lynn Karl. “All in all I wish we had discovered water” Sheik Yamani, Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia. Terry Lynn Karl opens her book by recalling the fairy tale King Midas who turned everything he touched to gold. She traces the similar, dismal performances of a group of developing states to their common trait, an abundance of petroleum, and likens their “paradox of plenty” to King Midas’ affliction. Karl presents a convincing case, which may be particularly salient for new oil states today. The Myth of “Black Gold” The Paradox of Plenty includes a case study of Venezuela,…
The last 60 years have witnessed the accession to sovereign status of dozens of former colonial territories and the birth of the modern development enterprise, but also a rapid secularisation of Western European societies especially. Yet, at the start of a new century, religion seems set to be a major force in international affairs in the world for the foreseeable future. Its public role can no longer be ignored.
Development experts at the World Bank, and The Economist debate Professor Eric Maskin’s theory on the effects of globalization on developing economies. While their analysis are both informative and insightful, they invariable serve as critiques of Maskin’s theory on why globalization may not be so helpful to developing economies, at least at this stage of the process. The Economist: DEFENDERS of globalisation often say that, whatever distress it may cause for rich-world workers, it has been good for poor countries. Between 1988 and 2008, global inequality, as measured by the distribution of income between rich and poor countries, has narrowed,…
By Dambisa Moyo. Review By Jane Wales. As the global financial crisis unfolds, those least responsible—our world’s poor—will be most affected. Many have called upon President Obama to uphold his campaign commitment to double foreign assistance. But Dambisa Moyo’s book, Dead Aid, challenges us to think again. Although we can all agree that ending poverty is an urgent necessity, there appears to be increasing disagreement about the best way to achieve that goal. Born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia, Moyo has spent the past eight years at Goldman Sachs as head of economic research and strategy for sub-Saharan…
Anup Shah. Corruption is both a major cause and a result of poverty around the world. It occurs at all levels of society, from local and national governments, civil society, judiciary functions, large and small businesses, military and other services and so on. Corruption affects the poorest the most, in rich or poor nations, though all elements of society are affected in some way as corruption undermines political development, democracy, economic development, the environment, people’s health and more. The issue of corruption is very much inter-related with other issues. At a global level, the “international” (Washington Consensus-influenced) economic system that…
Kiertisak Toh and Prahlad Kasturi. Many fragile states experienced conflict and its adverse impact on poverty and development at the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. The conflict-trap on development and global security concern spawned empirical research on how policies should be distinctive in the conflict-affected and post-conflict recovery to avoid the recurrence of conflicts. The literature on aid effectiveness in fragile states is relatively limited in comparison to a much larger body of literature on aid effectiveness for all aid recipients. In this paper, we apply cluster analysis and robust regression to a set of OECD-DAC-designated…
A long-standing economic theory commonly known as “Economic Convergence” postulates that as world economies develop they would inexorably attain the same level of development through trade based on comparative advantage, technology transfer through direct investment and job out-sourcing.