Buch, Englisch, 250 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 490 g
Reihe: CESifo Seminar Series
Buch, Englisch, 250 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 490 g
Reihe: CESifo Seminar Series
ISBN: 978-0-262-07284-7
Verlag: Penguin Random House LLC
Recent decades have seen almost unprecedented economic growth in income per capita
around the world. Yet this extraordinary overall performance masks a wide variation in growth rates
across different countries, with persistent underdevelopment in some parts of the world. This
disparity constitutes "the development puzzle," and it is exemplified by growth spurts in
China and India that contrast markedly with disturbingly low growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa. In
this volume, economists address issues of inequality and growth, going beyond narrowly defined
"economic" factors to consider the effect on growth of the structure of governance, the
quality of a country's governing bodies, and the social norms that govern collective
decision-making. The contributors use both formal modeling and empirical analyses to examine how the
"soft factors" of institutions and norms interact with growth performance, natural
resource endowments, and economic performance. They consider such topics as the effects of
decentralization in Africa, fiscal discipline in Indian states, natural resource wealth as a cause
of corruption, social violence during the Indonesian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998, and the
effect of strong national identity on redistributive politics. Some of their findings suggest that
not only do institutions and norms affect economic performance, economic performance itself is a key
factor in explaining such governance failures as corruption and the frequency and intensity of
economic conflict. Mark Gradstein is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at Ben
Gurion University in Israel. Kai A. Konrad is Professor of Economics at Free University of Berlin
and Director at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB).
