Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform

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World Bank Publications, 2005 - 364 pages
This book is part of a larger effort undertaken by the World Bank to understand the development experience of the 1990s, an extraordinary eventful decade. Each of the project's three volumes serves a different purpose. 'Development Challenges in the 1990s: Leading Policymakers Speak from Experience' offers insights on the practical concerns faced by policymakers, while 'At the Frontlines of Development: Reflections from the World Bank' considers the operational implications of the decade for the World Bank as an institution. This volume, 'Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform', provides comprehensive analysis of the decade's development experience and examines the impact of key policy and institutional reforms of growth. 'Economic Growth in the 1990s' confirms and builds on the conclusions of an earlier World Bank book, 'The East Asian Miracle' (1993), which reviewed experiences of highly successful East Asian economies. It confirms the importance of growth of fundamental principles: macro stability, market forces governing the allocation of resources, openness, and the sharing of the benefits of growth. At the same time, it echoes the finding that these principles translate into diverse policy and institutional paths, implying the economic policies and policy advice must be country-specific and institutional-sensitive if they are to be effective. The authors examine the impact of growth of key policy and institutional reforms: macroeconomic stabilization, trade liberalization, deregulation of finance, privatization, deregulation of utilities, modernization of the public sector with a view to increasing its effectiveness and accountability, and the spread of democracy and decentralization. They draw lessons both from a policy and institutional perspective and from the perspective of country experiences about how reforms in each policy and institutional area have affected growth.

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Page 61 - ... regions: the Middle East and North Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, where performance improved, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where performance deteriorated (table 3.2).
Page 52 - ... structures. These damage prediction models can be updated in response to events — particularly when they fail badly, in predicting either too much or too little damage. 2. Accused of changing his views, Keynes responded with a famous quip: "When the facts change, I change my mind — what do you do, sir?
Page 4 - What is remarkable about East Asia is not that it experienced a crisis in 1997, but that it experienced so few crises over the preceding decades. By and large, developing countries have one year of negative per capita growth roughly once every three years. In East Asia, the average is half that rate. Korea has only had only three years of negative per capita growth since...
Page 11 - development depends not so much on finding optimal combinations for given resources and factors of production as on calling forth and enlisting for development purposes resources and abilities that are hidden, scattered or badly utilized.
Page 277 - refers to actions of individuals, groups, or firms ... in the public and/or private sectors to influence the formation of laws, regulations, decrees, and other government policies to their advantage, through the illicit and nontransparent provision of private benefits to politicians and/or civil servants" (World Bank 2000a)8 and is a serious problem in many developing countries (Kaufinann 2003).
Page 152 - Government effectiveness" combines perception of the quality of public service provision, the quality of the bureaucracy, the competence of civil servants, the independence of the civil service from political pressures, and the credibility of the government's commitment to policies.
Page 109 - Least developed countries (60) Source: Caprio and Klingebiel 2003. ^Middle-income countries (35) — Low-income countries (24) policies such as adequate provision of public goods, as well as of social investments that might have both increased the growth payoff and made stability more durable. Seen in this light, some economies may well have been overstabilized. From a microeconomic perspective, the presumed stability gains from further fiscal adjustments may not have justified the costs of forgoing...
Page 150 - ... percent (for Latin America) to 35 percent (for Europe and Central Asia) on agricultural imports from developing countries. The issue of agricultural protection, in particular in cotton, has risen in prominence in multilateral trade talks, and was one of the main reasons for the failure of the most recent round of WTO talks in Cancun in September 2003. Since then, Brazil has gone to the WTO with charges that US subsidies on cotton are inconsistent with WTO obligations, and the WTO ruling on April...
Page 284 - Transparency in 1998 as a response to the financial crises of the late 1990s, and updated it in 2001. The Code is based on the following objectives: roles and responsibilities in government should be clear; information on government activities should be provided to the public; budget preparation, execution, and reporting should be undertaken in an open manner; and fiscal information should attain widely accepted standards of data quality and be subject to independent assurances of integrity. The...
Page 283 - Well-defined antideficit rules, especially when coupled with credible limits on government borrowing, induce smaller deficits and more rapid adjustment of taxes and spending to unexpected fiscal shortfalls.20 In recent years, a number of developing countries and subnational governments have passed fiscal responsibility acts to strengthen fiscal management. These laws enhance transparency, as well as the accountability of the executive to the legislature and the accountability of both the executive...

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