There is a growing consensus that the historical evidence shows that development and growth require the impetus provided by a functioning developmental state. Originally conceived through East Asian examples (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) as a ‘top-down' intervention undertaken by a pilot...

This paper is an evaluation of the Local Economic Development Agency (LEDA) model and network operating in Latin America with UNDP support. Originating in the 1980s as one of the supposedly transforming institutions linked to the neoliberal revolution, the commercialised LEDA model was one of...

The last thirty years or so has seen the commercial or ‘new wave' microfinance model rise to dominate the local financial systems in both developing and transition countries alike. Initially inspired by the Grameen Bank model that emerged in Bangladesh in the 1970s, but later refined to more...

The contemporary model of microfinance has its roots in a small local experiment in Bangladesh in the early 1970s undertaken by Dr Muhammad Yunus, the US-educated Bangladeshi economist and future 2006 Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient. Yunus's idea of supporting tiny informal microenterprises and...

This paper looks at the radical policies introduced in Medellin, in Colombia, to promote local development and social inclusion. While not always successful, the paper finds that they hold out a useful foundation for further reforms and measures to build local economic development success and...