A Strategy for DevelopmentWorld Bank Publications, 2002 M01 1 - 194 pages The speeches in this collection-all delivered since Nicholas Stern became Chief Economist of the World Bank in July 2000-reflect insights that Mr. Stern has gained over more than three decades of study and work in development economics. Together they provide an analysis of development experience and an agenda for action in the coming years. In his introduction, the author explains the evolution of his ideas, starting with early work in Africa and India, within the larger context of changes in development thinking and strategy. The speeches that follow draw on his varied experience and on the research findings and operational experience of the World Bank. The first speech provides an overview of the past five decades of development. Speeches that follow explore current development issues in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and China. A strategy for development is then outlined: building an economic climate that facilitates investment and growth, and empowering poor people to participate in that growth. A concluding speech examines the role of the international financial institutions in promoting investment and overcoming poverty. |
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adjustment Africa agenda agricultural Asia average Balochistan benefits building challenge China competition corruption costs crucial David Ellerman decades developing countries developing world domestic EBRD economic effective employment empowering poor empowerment enterprises example experience firms foreign investment girls globalization growth and poverty growth rates households IFIs important improving the investment incentives income increase India Indonesia industrial infrastructure investment climate investors Jacques de Larosière labor macro macroeconomic market economy medium-size ment climate microcredit Nicholas Stern nonfarm off-farm opportunities Pakistan Palanpur participation past percent policies and institutions political poverty line poverty reduction Pradesh private sector pro-poor problems productivity promote provinces public sector public services Ravallion recent reform region risks role rural areas schools SMEs social protection stability strategy survey tion trade transition TVEs urban Uttar Pradesh World Bank World Development Report
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Page 151 - everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.
Page 151 - It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.
Page 151 - ... and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger.
Page 25 - Deng uttered the famous words "it doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white; as long as it catches mice, it's a good cat.
Page 29 - ... capita terms, were also very unevenly distributed. Developing country statistics on both unemployment and income distribution are fairly unreliable, but there is not much question that even as Latin American stock markets were booming, unemployment was rising, and the poor were getting poorer. In sum, the real economic performance of countries that had recently adopted Washington consensus policies, as opposed to the financial returns they were delivering to international investors or the reception...
Page 149 - ... (1958, p. 7). Finally, Hirschman (1958, p. 43) drew the implications for policy: The complementarity effect of investment is therefore the essential mechanism by which new energies are channeled toward the development process and through which the vicious circle that seems to confine it can be broken. To give maximum play to this effect must therefore be a primary objective of development policy.
Page 157 - ... are much more likely to reach the very poor. But we should see social protection as much more than a short-run palliative. It is an essential underpinning of a market economy, one that helps it to function well and to involve poor people in the opportunities it creates. Without good social protection, poor people may be unable to take some of the risks that are part of...
Page 144 - investment climate," I mean the policy, institutional, and behavioral environment, both present and expected, that influences the returns and risks associated with investment. The notion of investment climate focuses on questions of institutions, governance, policies, stability, and infrastructure that affect not just the level of capital investment but also the productivity of existing investments — indeed, of all factors of production — and the willingness to make productive investments for...
Page 37 - Those [companies] who are with us now have good prospects of participating in our great country . . . [whereas those who wait] will remain observers for years to come — we will see to it" (International Herald Tribune, 1990: 5).
Page 149 - In too many cases governments used the rhetoric of reform to justify all sorts of half measures and misguided policies that only deepened people's cynical view that the more things change, the more they remain the same or deteriorate. The chipping away at public trust made later efforts to adopt real reforms — which rely so critically on credibility and consensus — that much more difficult. Much of the challenge for those whose job it is to promote development is to understand how to break free...