Transforming Economies


Book Description

This book helps connect the dots between economic theory, the role of capabilities, the lessons from history and the practical challenges of design and implementation of industrial policies. In so doing it provides an excellent policy roadmap for anyone interested in the challenge of promoting catch-up growth and productive transformation.




Beloved Economies


Book Description

What if changing how we work could make our economies work for us? For many of us today, work feels like a fever dream. We battle our way through overwhelm, stress, and an impossible to-do list--and remain financially strapped. All the content we consume seems to be telling us: we are the problem. If we just used the right time-blocking app, or managed our finances better, or learned to meditate, or... But what if work feels this way because it's a direct result of how our current economy is designed, going back to the very roots of our current society itself? And what if work could be profoundly different? What if we told you that there are teams, businesses, organizations, and individuals who are transforming their work to co-create life-affirming innovation and success? What if we told you those involved in these breakout cases describe their work with words like lightness, liberation, momentum, self-knowledge, calm, meaningful, community, and even joy - all while outperforming their mainstream counterparts? Based on seven years of research and co-learning with dozens of these breakout individuals, teams, and organizations, Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work offers readers an imagination-expanding vision of what work can be. The book outlines seven practices that any individual, team, or enterprise can embark on now, to transform how we work and build economies that are healing, just, and wise. Beloved Economies reveals that it is not what we do, but how we do it that can be our most powerful lever for building economies that we can all love.




Industrial Policy and Economic Transformation in Africa


Book Description

The revival of economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is all the more welcome for having followed one of the worst economic disasters—a quarter century of economic malaise for most of the region—since the industrial revolution. Six of the world's fastest-growing economies in the first decade of this century were African. Yet only in Ethiopia and Rwanda was growth not based on resources and the rising price of oil. Deindustrialization has yet to be reversed, and progress toward creating a modern economy remains limited. This book explores the vital role that active government policies can play in transforming African economies. Such policies pertain not just to industry. They traverse all economic sectors, including finance, information technology, and agriculture. These packages of learning, industrial, and technology (LIT) policies aim to bring vigorous and lasting growth to the region. This collection features case studies of LIT policies in action in many parts of the world, examining their risks and rewards and what they mean for Sub-Saharan Africa.




Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy


Book Description

The second edition of an innovative undergraduate textbook in Comparative Economic Systems that goes beyond the traditional dichotomies.




The Age of Productivity


Book Description

Age of Productivity offers a look at how the low productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean is preventing the region from catching up with the developed world. The authors look beyond the traditional macro explanations and dig all the way down to the industry and firm level to uncover the causes.




Transforming the European Economy


Book Description

Europe grew rapidly for many years, but now, faced with greater challenges, several of the large economies in Europe have either failed to generate enough jobs or have failed to achieve the highest levels of productivity or both. This study explores why Europe's growth slowed, what contribution information technology makes to growth, and what policies could facilitate economic transformation. It emphasizes a system with strong work incentives and a high level of competitive intensity. Europe doesn't need to eliminate its protections for individuals, the authors conclude, but both social programs and policies toward business must be reoriented so that they encourage economic change.




Take Back the Economy


Book Description

In the wake of economic crisis on a global scale, more and more people are reconsidering their role in the economy and wondering what they can do to make it work better for humanity and the planet. In this innovative book, J. K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy contribute complex understandings of economics in practical terms: what can we do right now, in our own communities, to make a difference? Full of exercises, thinking tools, and inspiring examples from around the world, Take Back the Economy shows how people can implement small-scale changes in their own lives to create ethical economies. There is no manifesto here, no one prescribed model; rather, readers are encouraged and taught how to take back the economy in ways appropriate for their own communities and context, using what they already have at hand. Take Back the Economy dismantles the idea that the economy is separate from us and best comprehended by experts. Instead, the authors demonstrate that the economy is the outcome of the decisions and efforts we make every day. The economy is thus reframed as a space of ethical action—something we can shape and alter according to what is best for the well-being of people and the planet. The book explores what people are already doing to build ethical economies, presenting these deeds as mutual concerns: What is necessary for survival, and what do we do with the surplus produced beyond what will fulfill basic needs? What do we consume, and how do we preserve and replenish the commons—those resources that can be shared to maintain all? And finally, how can we invest in a future worth living in? Suitable for activists and students alike, Take Back the Economy will be of interest to anyone seeking a more just, sustainable, and equitable world.




Reforms and Economic Transformation in India


Book Description

Reforms and Economic Transformation in India is the second volume in the series Studies in Indian Economic Policies. The first volume, India's Reforms: How They Produced Inclusive Growth (OUP, 2012), systematically demonstrated that reforms-led growth in India led to reduced poverty among all social groups. They also led to shifts in attitudes whereby citizens overwhelmingly acknowledge the benefits that accelerated growth has brought them and as voters, they now reward the governments that deliver superior economic outcomes and punish those that fail to do so. This latest volume takes as its starting point the fact that while reforms have undoubtedly delivered in terms of poverty reduction and associated social objectives, the impact has not been as substantial as seen in other reform-oriented economies such as South Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently, in China. The overarching hypothesis of the volume is that the smaller reduction in poverty has been the result of slower transformation of the economy from a primarily agrarian to a modern, industrial one. Even as the GDP share of agriculture has seen rapid decline, its employment share has declined very gradually. More than half of the workforce in India still remains in agriculture. In addition, non-farm workers are overwhelmingly in the informal sector. Against this background, the nine original essays by eminent economists pursue three broad themes using firm level data in both industry and services. The papers in part I ask why the transformation in India has been slow in terms of the movement of workers out of agriculture, into industry and services, and from informal to formal employment. They address what India needs to do to speed up this transformation. They specifically show that severe labor-market distortions and policy bias against large firms has been a key factor behind the slow transformation. The papers in part II analyze the transformation that reforms have brought about within and across enterprises. For example, they investigate the impact of privatization on enterprise profitability. Part III addresses the manner in which the reforms have helped promote social transformation. Here the papers analyze the impact the reforms have had on the fortunes of the socially disadvantaged groups in terms of wage and education outcomes and as entrepreneurs.




China's Great Economic Transformation


Book Description

This landmark study provides an integrated analysis of China's unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. The authors combine deep China expertise with broad disciplinary knowledge to explain China's remarkable combination of high-speed growth and deeply flawed institutions. Their work exposes the mechanisms underpinning the origin and expansion of China's great boom. Penetrating studies track the rise of Chinese capabilities in manufacturing and in research and development. The editors probe both achievements and weaknesses across many sectors, including China's fiscal, legal, and financial institutions. The book shows how an intricate minuet combining China's political system with sectorial development, globalization, resource transfers across geographic and economic space, and partial system reform delivered an astonishing and unprecedented growth spurt.




Transforming Urban Economies


Book Description

Cities house the majority of the world's population and are the dynamic centres of 21st century life, at the heart of economic, social and environmental change. They are still beset by difficult problems but often demonstrate resilience in the face of regional and national economic decline. Faced by the combined threats of globalisation and world recession, cities and their metropolitan regions have had to fight hard to maintain their global competitiveness and protect the quality of life of urban residents Transforming Urban Economies: Policy Lessons from European and Asian Cities, the first in an ongoing series of research volumes by LSE Cities, provides insights in how cities can respond positively to these challenges. The fine-grained and authoritative analysis of how Barcelona, Turin, Munich and Seoul have been transformed in the last 20 years examines comparative patterns of decline, adaptation and recovery of cities that have successfully managed to transform their economies in the face of economic hardship. This in-depth and practical analysis is aimed at urban leaders, designers, planners, policymakers and scholars who want to understand the dynamics of economic resilience while cities are still suffering from the aftershocks of the 2008 recession. The book highlights the importance of aligned and multi-level governance, the need for strategic public investments and the role of the private sector, universities and foundations in leading and guiding complex processes of urban recovery in an increasingly uncertain age.