South Africa has undergone a remarkable transformation since its democratic transition in 1994, but economic growth and employment generation have been disappointing. Most worryingly, unemployment is currently among the highest in the world. While the proximate cause of high unemployment is that...

Unlike what is commonly believed, the last two decades have not witnessed the twilight of industrial policy. Instead, incentives and subsidies have been refocused on exports and direct foreign investment, in the belief that these activities are the source of significant positive spillovers. The...

Mozambique liberalized its cashew sector in the early 1990s in response to pressure from the World Bank. Opponents of the reform have argued that the policy did little to benefit poor cashew farmers while bankrupting factories in urban areas. Using a welfare-theoretic framework, we analyze the...

The new conventional wisdom on globalization emphasizes that reaping the benefits of trade and financial integration is not automatic, and requires better domestic institutions, essentially improved safety nets in rich countries and improved governance in the poor countries. The prevailing...

Malaysia recovered from the Asian financial crisis swiftly after the imposition of capital controls in September 1998. The fact that Korea and Thailand recovered in parallel has been interpreted as suggesting that capital controls did not play a significant role in facilitating Malaysia's...

Development economists should stop acting as categorical advocates (or detractors) for specific approaches to development. They should instead be diagnosticians, helping decisionmakers choose the right model (and remedy) for their specific realities, among many contending models (and remedies)....

Novelists have a better track record than economists at foretelling the future. Consider then Gary Shteyngart’s timely comic novel “Super Sad True Love Story†(Random House, 2010), which provides a rather graphic vision of what lies in store for the world economy. The novel takes...