Pathways Out of Poverty: Private Firms and Economic Mobility in Developing Countries

Front Cover
Gary S. Fields, Guy Pierre Pfeffermann
Springer Science & Business Media, 2003 M09 30 - 297 pages

Until recently, development economists tended to assume a role for private enterprise in reducing poverty, but they didn't articulate it explicitly. The new institutional economics literature, with its emphasis on transaction costs, addresses the environment in which private businesses operate in various countries - the "investment climate".

Building on this new thinking, Pathways Out of Poverty begins by citing the worldwide drop in the number of very poor people and goes on to identify the ways in which private firms and farms contribute to economic mobility and poverty reduction and what governments can do to enhance this contribution. In four Parts, the editors and contributors address economic mobility, offer numerous global examples, consider the importance of good investment climates, and examine the impact of public policies and public attitudes. Their theory, hard economic analysis, and case studies provide rich and innovative mechanisms for reducing poverty in developing and transition countries.

From inside the book

Contents

The Overall Framework
3
Household Income Dynamics in Indonesia South Africa Spain and Venezuela
13
New Evidence
35
Poverty Trap or Decent Alternative?
61
Cases from Around the World
79
The Case of Korea and Private Sector Development
81
6 The Central Role of Entrepreneurs in Transition Economies
101
Five Decades of Development in an Indian Village
119
Part III The Business Environment
187
What the World Business Environment Survey Tells Us about Constraints on Private Sector Development
189
10 Obstacles Facing Smaller Business in Developing Countries
211
Part IV Public Policy and Public Attitudes
223
11 Bringing SMEs into Global Markets
225
Economic Mobility Public Attitudes and Public Policy
243
Index
279
Copyright

8 The Problem of African Entrepreneurial Development
151

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