Abstract Both Mexico and China have started export orientation in some industries, through assembly operations, based on imported inputs a couple of decades ago. The literature on industrialization, has discussed the questions of import substitutions and outward-orientation mainly as alternative...

The IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook (WEO), published last week, projects world economic growth will slow, from 4.8 percent in 2010 to 4.2 percent next year. Throughout the report, there are numerous concerns expressed about the “fragility” of the global economic recovery. The...

Growth and development has always spurred outpouring of research. This paper offers a very preliminary survey of recent literature in the field.

This paper investigates the relationship between the policy regime and growth during 1950-64 termed here `the Nehru era'. While there exist valuable early appraisals of the period, access to new data and fresh information allows for a longer and comparative view of the outcome. We find...

The contribution of the ‘new economy’ to economic growth in developing countries has so far been minimal. Despite the recent hype, the ‘old economy’ will for long be the fundamental force behind economic growth in transition economies. Nonetheless, in the longer run the ‘new economy’...

This paper assesses biofuels technology readiness and provides foresight to biofuels development in Southern Africa. Efficient conversion pathways, coupled with biomass from waste or high-yielding energy crops, reduces both the costs of biofuels production and the environmental impacts....

Rapid urbanization is a fact of live even in the least developed countries (LDCs) where the lion’s share of the population presently lives in rural areas and will continue to do so for decades to come. At the turn of the millennium 75% of the LDCs’ population still lived in rural areas and...

This paper is part of a discussion between CEPR and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) regarding CEPR’s paper, “IMF-Supported Macroeconomic Policies and the World Recession: A Look at Forty-One Borrowing Countries.” An IMF representative presented a response to that paper at an October...

This paper finds that 31 of 41 of countries with current International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreements have been subjected to pro-cyclical macroeconomic policies that, during the current global recession, would be expected to have exacerbated economic slowdowns.

The rise of China is no doubt the most important event in world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. The institutional theory of development based on a dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions cannot explain China’s rise. This article argues that only a radical...