The 2008-09 global financial crisis shook the ground under the
conventional wisdom that had guided mainstream development economics.
Much of what had been held as true for decades is now open to
reexamination—from what the role of governments should be in
markets to which countries will be the engines of the world's
economy, from what people need to leave poverty to what businesses need
to stay competitive.
Development economists look into the future. They do not just ask
how things work today, but how a new policy, program, or project would
make them work tomorrow. They view the world and history as a learning
process—past and present are inputs into thinking about what is
coming. It is that appetite for a vision of the future that led the
authors of The Day after Tomorrow: A Handbook on the Future of
Economic Policy in the Developing World to invite some 40
development economists, most of them from the World Bank's Poverty
Reduction and Economic Management Network—an epicenter of the
profession—to report what they see on the horizon of their
technical disciplines and of their geographic areas of
specialization.
The disconcerting but exciting search for a new intellectual compact
has begun. To help guide the discussion, The Day after Tomorrow: A
Handbook on the Future of Economic Policy in the Developing World
puts forth four key messages:
- While the developed world gets its house in order, and
macroeconomics and finance achieve a new consensus, developing
countries will become a (perhaps the) growth engine for the world.
Faster technological learning and more South-South integration will
fuel that engine.
- Governments in developing countries will be better—they may
even begin to earn the trust of their people.
- A new, smarter generation of social policy will bring the end of
poverty within reach, but the attainment of equality is another
matter.
- Many regions of the developing world will break out of their
"developing" status and will graduate into something akin to
"newly developed." Africa will eventually join that group.
Others, like Eastern Europe, have a legacy of problems to address
before such a transition.
While some regions will do better than others, and some technical
areas will be clearer than others, there is no question that the
horizon of economic policy for developing countries is
promising—risky, yes, but promising. The rebalancing of global
growth toward, at the very least, a multiplicity of engines, will give
the developing world a new relevance.
- Shipping Weight: 1.36 lbs (0.62 kgs)
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