Introduction (Paul Dobrescu) -- Part I. Envisaging Development in the Contemporary Society: Theory and Public Debates -- Why Do Some Countries Develop and Others Not? (Ian Goldin) -- Measuring the Hard-to-Measure in Development: Dimensions, Measurement Challenges, and Responses (Anne L....

About the Book -- About the Editor -- Dedication -- Contributors -- Introduction -- China: The Bankable State -- Chapter-1: Role of State in the Evolution and Success of Commercial Banks in China -- Chapter-2: Historical Trends and Transitions in Credit Risk Management of Chinese Commercial...

Africa's recent growth performance has raised expectations of a bright economic future for the continent after decades of decline. Yet there is a genuine question about whether Africa's growth can be sustained, and if so, at what level. The balance of the evidence suggests caution on the...

Various arguments have been used to explain Sub-Saharan Africa's economic decline. We find that a stress on investments in education as a prerequisite for more rapid growth is misplaced; that greater openness is far from sufficient to insure economic progress; that income inequality and urban bias...

The dismal growth performance of Africa is the worst economic tragedy of the XXth century. We document the evolution of per capita GDP for the continent as a whole and for subset of countries south of the Sahara desert. We document the worsening of various income inequality indexes and we...

Whereas traditional explanations of differences in long-run paths of development across the Americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion, we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth, human capital, and...

Over the last few years, colonialism, especially as pursued by Europeans, has enjoyed a revival in interest among both scholars and the general public. Although a number of new accounts cast colonial empires in a more favorable light than has generally been customary, others contend that...

1. Introduction; Jorge Alvarez and Svante Prado -- Part 1. Latin America and Scandinavia -- 2. Latin American and Nordic countries: a renewed tradition of comparative studies; Jorge Álvarez, Luis Bértola and Jan Bohlin -- Part 2: Trade, industrialisation and growth -- 3. Foreign trade and...

The conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. Using the methodology of Pinkovskiy and Sala-i-Martin (2009), we estimate income distributions, poverty rates, and inequality and welfare indices for African countries for the period 1970-2006. We show that: (1) African...

The 1980s were both the lost decade of growth for much of Latin America and Africa, and the period in which -- through the new growth theory -- macroeconomists returned to the study of growth and development. The new growth theory is production function driven and concerned primarily with steady...