In this book Peter Lindert evaluates environmental concerns about soil degradation in two very large countries--China and Indonesia--where anecdotal evidence has suggested serious problems. Lindert does what no scholar before him has done: using new archival data sets, he measures changes in...

A developing country's choice of an appropriate technology from among those available for use in a particular industry is critical: alternative technological strategies that involve varying mixes of capital, labor, and social costs could have significantly different impacts not only on the...

Over the past three decades the developing world has seen increasing devolution of political and economic power to local governments. Decentralization is considered an important element of participatory democracy and, along with privatization and deregulation, represents a substantial reduction...