This paper attempts to understand Asian Drama in the context of the development debates of its time, and in terms of the sensibilities that Gunnar Myrdal - the brilliant economic theorist and philosopher of knowledge, and Swedish politician - brought to the conceptualization of the problems and...

This paper is a short history of the Indian economy since 1968. India today is a changed country from what it was half a century ago, when Myrdal published his Asian Drama. The stranglehold of low growth has been broken, its population below the poverty line has fallen markedly, and India has...

This paper is essentially autobiographical and describes Erik Thorbecke's journey through the history of development economics between the 1950s and the present. The paper consists of four parts. First, an introduction reviews briefly his professional career as a development economist and his...

Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama in 1968, a work which made important analytical contributions to our understanding of development but was deeply pessimistic about Asia's future prospects. Since then, contrary to Myrdal's expectations, Asia's development has been remarkable, although...

Given likely increases in biofuel demand across Southern Africa, we identify suitable production models in Zambia for the Southern African market. This is crucial given, on the one hand, the problems of contract failure and transaction costs that plague outgrower models in Southern Africa and,...

We use the case of the timber industry in Myanmar to analyse how national regulatory frameworks and international ecological discourses affect forest management and small businesses. The state plays two roles in the timber industry in Myanmar: it is the main producer and legal source of raw...

This study documents the local transformation of rural Vietnamese communes in 12 different provinces from 2006 to 2014. Three key areas are considered, namely occupational and agricultural choice; provision of public goods and infrastructure as well as land markets. While many areas showed great...

Financing and the role of aid within the water sector are poorly understood. We estimate the levels of spending achieved in developing countries during the Millennium Development Goals period to be US$80 billion per year. Aid represented a substantial proportion of total sector financing in...

Over the last fifteen years many African countries have experienced a mining take-off. Mining activities have bifurcated into two sectors: large-scale, capital-intensive production generating the bulk of the exported minerals, and small-scale, labour-intensive artisanal mining, which, at...

In this study we analyse the evolution of deprivation indicators and of a multidimensional poverty index using Mozambican census data for 1997 and 2007. We analyse deprivation levels according to eight different indicators reflecting housing conditions and access to public utilities/basic...