Blog
Science and Survival: Is an Agriculture-led Developmental Model the Way Forward for sub-Saharan Africa?
9 May 2013 Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen and Roger Williamson Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century, (edited by Adam Szirmai, Wim...
Blog
After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Some Lessons on Transition
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London was the setting on 19 June 2012 for the launch of the...
Blog
What Did You Do in the Currency Wars? (Part I)
Tony Addison The present currency turmoil is both a symptom and a cause of profound changes now underway in the global economy. In part 1 of this two...
Blog
Africa's Failure to Industrialize: Bad Luck or Bad Policy?
by
John Page
December 2014
16 December 2014 John Page On 20 November 2014 the United Nations celebrated the 25th Africa Industrialization Day. But perhaps ‘celebrate’ is not...
Blog
Africa’s Low Hanging Fruits
by
Justin Lin, Yan Wang
April 2014
23 April 2014 Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang At the onset of its miraculous rise in 1979, China had been trapped in poverty for centuries and was poorer...
Working Paper
Industrial Policy
The debate on industrial policy (IP) has been characterized by a number of contractions over the concept of industrial policy, its merits, contents and application. The purpose of this exploratory paper is to review the debate on IP. Outlining the...
Blog
China and India’s Development Strategies: Lessons for Developing Countries
by
Amelia U. Santos-Paulino, Guanghua Wan
October 2010
Amelia U. Santos-Paulino and Guanghua Wan China and India have become global economic powers. Even at the market exchange rate, China overtook Japan...
Blog
Animal Spirits
Tony Addison 'Birds of a feather flock together', the old saying goes. So too do investors. Today, those investment birds are a depressed lot. The...
Policy Brief
The Global Impact of the Southern Engines of Growth
This Policy Brief focuses on links between the developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China’s spectacular growth on developing economies and the rest of the...
Policy Brief
Development Success
What, if anything, can today's developing countries learn from the past strategies of more advanced countries? the answer is 'a great deal', despite the obvious fact that the development environment has changed significantly. Based on 11 themes, this...
Policy Brief
Industrial Policy for Development
New challenges and emerging paradigms have turned industrialization and industrial policy into one of the most hotly debated and interesting issues of the early twenty-first century. Both the role of manufacturing in economic development and the...
Blog
Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Development: Lessons from Finland
by
Otto Toivanen
October 2009
Otto Toivanen At least since the 1950s it has been recognized that innovation is central to economic growth. It has also been well understood that...
Blog
Are African Countries Paying Too Much Attention To Agriculture?
by
Luc Christiaensen, Lionel Demery
April 2010
Luc Christiaensen and Lionel Demery Escalating food prices in 2007-2008, climate change and land grabbing have woken the world up to the extraordinary...
Journal Article
Can Africa Industrialise?
Africa needs structural change to sustain growth. Industry with and without smoke stacks is key, but Africa has deindustrialised since the 1970s. Can Africa industrialise? Rising costs and domestic demand in Asia offer an opportunity. However, trade...
Working Paper
Economic History of Industrialization in Cambodia
The industrialization which started in 1953 had been completely disrupted by the chronic civil war and closed-door policy of successive communism/socialism regimes. Since 1993 Cambodia has embraced a market economy heavily dependent on foreign...
Working Paper
Viet Nam
In analyzing Viet Nam's recent economic adjustments, this paper attempts to distinguish events and policies that are properly assigned to the transition effort (defined as the process of increasing the market determination of economic outcomes) and...
Journal Article
A note on modelling economic growth determinants in the Dominican Republic
The article models economic growth determinants in the Dominican Republic. The exercise considers a panel of 25 candidate explanatory variables observed during the last three decades of the twentieth century. The time series are selected on the basis...
Book Chapter
Regulatory Reform for Closing Africa's Competitiveness Gap
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Book Chapter
China-Africa Cooperation in Structural Transformation
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Blog
Regional Industrialization and Integration in Southern Africa - Reporting from TIPS Annual Forum
by
Roger Williamson
September 2015
The white-painted cluster of traditional style buildings might suggest that this was a farm on the South African veldt. Not so however—it was Trade...
Working Paper
The Role of Training in Fostering Cluster-Based Micro and Small Enterprises Development
While it has been increasingly recognized that efficient management holds the key to the development of micro and small enterprises in developing countries, we know very little about the managerial capacity of business owners and managers in these...
Working Paper
Is Small Beautiful? Small Enterprise, Aid and Employment in Africa
Aid providers frequently link supporting small firms to job creation. Small firms create about half of new jobs in Africa, but they also have higher failure rates. Ignoring firm exit exaggerates net employment growth. Using panel data for Ethiopia...
Working Paper
How Production Firms Adapt to War
How do production firms adapt to civil war? The answer to this question will inform the potential for economic development during and after conflict. Many businesses survive violent conflict, and in some cases even thrive. Understanding these...
Working Paper
Industrial Location and Spatial Inequality
We argue that spatial inequality of industry location is a primary cause of spatial income inequality in developing nations. We focus on understanding the process of spatial industrial variation—identifying the spatial factors that have cost...
Working Paper
Industrial Policies in Latin America
This chapter analyses the main features of industrial policies carried out in Latin America since 1990. It studies these policies during import substitution industrialization and how they changed after the market-oriented economic reforms. It...
Working Paper
Should Africa Industrialize?
Africa should industrialize. Without structural change it cannot sustain recent growth. Economies with more diverse and sophisticated industrial sectors tend to grow faster. But since 1980 Africa has deindustrialized. The paper shows that between...
Working Paper
Emerging Patterns of Manufacturing Structural Change
In the past, research on changes in relative importance among broad three sectors—agriculture, industry, and service—showed general patterns of a country’s structural transformation along with economic development. However, there has been devoid of...
Working Paper
Can Industrial Policy Work under Neopatrimonial Rule?
Technological latecomer countries face a dilemma, they need to pursue pro-active industrial policies to compensate for manifold disadvantages vis-à-vis established competitors, but at the same time, due to neopatrimonial politics and capacity...
Working Paper
Entrepreneurship, Stages of Development, and Industrialization
Unlike in the past where industrial policy was either focused on creation and growth of state-owned firms or alternatively consisted merely of broadly functional policies without consideration for firm or entrepreneurial specifics, the requirement...
Working Paper
Rethinking China’s Path of Industrialization
This study shows that China’s post-1949 state-led industrialization has closely followed an underlying path that began in the late nineteenth century. It was initiated by pressing national defence needs and has since been motivated by the same and...
Working Paper
Manufacturing Productivity, Deindustrialization, and Reindustrialization
In considering pathways to industrialization in the twenty-first century, cognisance needs to be taken of the fact that many countries have actually been deindustrializing. This paper analyses deindustrialization experiences internationally, by...
Working Paper
Industrial Policy in the Twenty-First Century
Industrial policy has attracted considerable controversy in the development context. This paper makes a case for a pragmatic and limited approach to interventions as a means of stimulating industrialization in the context of current and future...
Panel discussion
Joint UNU-WIDER, UNU-MERIT, AND UNIDO panel discussion, incorporating book launch: The past, present, and future of economic development via industrialization
Over the last two centuries, the experiences of the first wave of industrialized countries in Europe and the US, and the more recent experiences of the East Asian Tigers, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, India, and Vietnam, have illustrated the...
Thu, 11 April 2013
London School of Economics and Political Science, Wolfson Theatre,
London,
United States
Past event
Blog
Making Information Accessible and Affordable for All
by
Veli-Pekka Niitamo
2000
by Veli-Pekka Niitamo Great challenges must be over come if the emerging ‘mobile information society’ is to be affordable and accessible worldwide...
Working Paper
Innovation Systems, Radical Transformation, Step-by-Step
The paper introduces a reform trajectory we call ‘revolutionary incrementalism’ in which partial and incremental measures add up to profound transformation. Recent advances in economic theory demonstrate that growth is not hard to start: it almost...