Long before the socialist industrialized nations began to call their centrally planned, or government controlled, economies into question, policymakers in many developing countries with dirigistic, interventionist systems, including capitalist oriented ones, had started to rethink their economic...

The priority previously given to urban areas by development programmes was replaced in the 1980s by efforts to implement deliberately targeted rural development. These often relatively complex projects showed less sustainable success than had been expected, however. What are the requirements for...

An increasing number of voices have recently been claiming that an economic system based more strongly on the market should be introduced in Third World countries for reasons of efficiency. What conditions need to be met in the developing countries for this to be possible? What specific measures...

The actual effects of integration among developing countries often diverge considerably from the gains which the participants had expected. Thomas Straubhaar examines the reasons for this and outlines the conditions which must be fulfilled for integration to be successful.

Government intervention in developing countries has often been biased towards the support of urban industries and the urban population. The resulting distortions in exchange rates and in the prices of the factors of production have had serious detrimental effects on rural areas. A gradual...

Protectionism in international trade, in particular with regard to imports from developing countries, has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1970s. Dieter Schumacher analyses the reasons for this development and makes some proposals for a liberalization of trade which take the...

The opposition to a liberal stance on imports of manufactures from developing countries is growing as certain specific groups of products made in these countries prove increasingly competitive and the industrialized countries suffer from persistent high unemployment. Model computations for the...

The controversy about the pros and cons of state interference in the economy has become much more heated in recent years. In the industrialised countries this can be gauged from the debate about deregulation and privatisation. The proposition that the more market-oriented the economy the more...