The quest for prosperity Lin, Justin Yifu; Lin, Justin Yifu
2012., 20141012, 2014, 2012-09-09, 2015-01-01, 20120101
eBook
How can developing countries grow their economies? Most answers to this question center on what the rich world should or shouldn't do for the poor world. InThe Quest for Prosperity, Justin Yifu ...Lin-the first non-Westerner to be chief economist of the World Bank-focuses on what developing nations can do to help themselves. Lin examines how the countries that have succeeded in developing their own economies have actually done it. Interwoven with insights, observations, and stories from Lin's travels as chief economist of the World Bank and his reflections on China's rise, this book provides a road map and hope for those countries engaged in their own quest for prosperity.
In Economic Development and Transition, renowned development economist Justin Yifu Lin argues that economic performance in developing countries depends largely on government strategy. If the ...government plays a facilitating role, enabling firms to exploit the economy's comparative advantages, its economy will develop successfully. However, governments in most developing countries attempt to promote industries that go against their comparative advantages by creating various kinds of distortion to protect nonviable firms in priority industries. Failing to recognize the original intention of many distortions, most governments in transition economies attempt to eliminate those distortions without addressing firms' viability problems, causing economic performance to deteriorate in their transition process. Governments in successful transition economies adopt a pragmatic dual-track approach that encourages firms to enter sectors that were suppressed previously and gives necessary support to firms in priority industries before their viability issue is addressed.
How poor countries can ignite economic growth without waiting for global action or the creation of ideal local conditions
Contrary to conventional wisdom, countries that ignite a process of rapid ...economic growth almost always do so while lacking what experts say are the essential preconditions for development, such as good infrastructure and institutions. InBeating the Odds, two of the world's leading development economists begin with this paradox to explain what is wrong with mainstream development thinking-and to offer a practical blueprint for moving poor countries out of the low-income trap regardless of their circumstances.
Justin Yifu Lin, the former chief economist of the World Bank, and Célestin Monga, the chief economist of the African Development Bank, propose a development strategy that encourages poor countries to leap directly into the global economy by building industrial parks and export-processing zones linked to global markets. Countries can leverage these zones to attract light manufacturing from more advanced economies, as East Asian countries did in the 1960s and China did in the 1980s. By attracting foreign investment and firms, poor countries can improve their trade logistics, increase the knowledge and skills of local entrepreneurs, gain the confidence of international buyers, and gradually make local firms competitive. This strategy is already being used with great success in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and other countries. And the strategy need not be limited to traditional manufacturing but can also include agriculture, the service sector, and other activities.
Beating the Oddsshows how poor countries can ignite growth without waiting for global action or the creation of ideal local conditions.
In 2020, China proposed a new development paradigm centered on domestic circulation with a "dual circulation" model in which domestic circulation and international circulation promote each other. ...This new paradigm reflects a clear understanding of China's development trend that saw its share of exports in the GDP declining steadily since 2006. However, the new paradigm does not necessarily mean that China should change its past policy of fully utilizing domestic and international markets and resources in economic development. Because of large economies of scale in modern manufacturing sector, China should continue to make full use of international markets.
Progress in Africa’s economic growth in the new millennium has been uneven across countries, and has not translated into structural transformation. The same can be said about the evolving ...China–Africa economic relations. Although economic ties between China and Africa have made a positive contribution, the impact of this dynamic engagement has been uneven, shaped by variations in strategic approach, policy ownership, and implementation capacity among African governments. As China undergoes major economic rebalancing to upgrade to an innovation-driven economy, this is bound to affect China–Africa relations, offering both opportunities and challenges. Authored by leading scholars on Africa, China, and China–Africa relations, this volume brings together stimulating and thought-provoking perspectives, and deeper analyses on the evolving China–Africa relations. Focusing on Africa’s economic development, the volume looks at core areas of structural transformation: productive investment and industrialization, international trade, infrastructure development, and financing. China–Africa relations are considered in the context of the global division of labour and power, and the particular role of both China and the continent of Africa in the evolving global hierarchy. This volume seeks to fill the gap in the existing literature, steer policy and scholarly debate on the progress and trajectory of China–Africa cooperation, and analyse China’s development path as a source of learning for Africa.
This Element proposes an alternative framework for rethinking the role of finance in serving the real economy from the perspective of New Structural Financial Economics. It challenges the ...conventional wisdom that developing countries should take the financial structure of developed countries as the benchmark and financial structure does not matter in spurring long-run economic development. As a sub-discipline of New Structural Economics, New Structural Financial Economics has three tenets. First, examining the appropriate financial structure should take an economy's factor endowment structure as the starting point of analysis, which identifies its latent comparative advantage. Second, the appropriate financial structure is determined by the financing needs of the prevailing production structure. Third, a government should provide development financing to address market failures, and make tailored financial regulations in line with the characteristics of specific financial arrangements. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
According to the law of economic development, the proportion of domestic circulation in a country's economy increases with the growth of economic size and the enlargement of service industry, both ...caused by the rise of income. In the new development paradigm, the Chinese government puts forward the idea of "taking the domestic circulation as the mainstay", which reflects this basic economic law. However, the policy of "making full use of the domestic and international markets and resources" is still equally important. Therefore, the new development pattern includes the idea of "the domestic circulation and international circulation reinforcing each other". To implement the new development paradigm, the most important things are to tap the growth potential through structural reform, deepen reform to improve the efficiency of domestic circulation and deepen the opening up to make better use of international resources so as to promote development and raise income level.
New structural economics is a new framework for rethinking economic development following structuralism and neoliberalism after World War II. This framework uses a neoclassical approach to study the ...determinants of economic structure and its evolution in a country's economic development (Lin, 2011). We argue that a country's economic structure is endogenous to its factor endowments, and that the key for developmental success is to have a facilitating government to help entrepreneurs overcome soft and hard infrastructure bottlenecks so as to enable industries with comparative advantages to have competitive advantages in domestic and international markets. New structural economics is highly related to the field of government and economics. Both areas of research study the role of the government in the economy.
This article discusses the rationale for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and conducts an empirical analysis utilising a revised gravity model linking connective infrastructure constructed under ...the auspices of the BRI with global trade in the 2010–22 period. The authors’ empirical analysis shows that BRI connective infrastructure projects are beneficial to both the export and import countries. After controlling for all other factors, the existence of connective infrastructure in the export country is associated with a 25% increase in its export value, with a significant reduction in the transport costs.
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