Taking The Right Road To Inclusive Growth

This report discusses key policy challenges that need to be addressed if the Philippines were to embark on sustainable and inclusive growth. We take the view that the main reason behind the Philippines' lagging growth and development outcomes in the regional context lies in a sluggish transformation of the economy---in particular, stagnant industrialization. Chronic problems of unemployment, poverty, and low investment are reflections of weak industrial development. The economy has been led by services, and it has been further shifting toward services with the growing business process outsourcing. Nevertheless, sole development of the services sectors is not sufficient to address the development challenges and lead to inclusive growth. We propose more targeted public sector support, which focuses on specific industries and products for industrial upgrading and diversification. This report shows a methodology of choosing products for targeted public sector support, and recommends effective dialogue between the public and private sectors to identify constraints specific to the target products and to develop adequate solutions. The Philippines needs to develop a stronger industrial base to enable the economy to "walk on two legs" of industry and modern services, to create productive job opportunities for the growing working-age population.

Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Development makes the case that greening growth is necessary, efficient, and affordable. Yet spurring growth without ensuring equity will thwart efforts to reduce poverty and improve access to health, education, and infrastructure services.

Why has an economy that has done so many things right failed to grow fast? Under-Rewarded Efforts traces Mexico’s disappointing growth to flawed microeconomic policies that have suppressed productivity growth and nullified the expected benefits of the country’s reform efforts. Fast growth will not occur doing more of the same or focusing on issues that may be key bottlenecks to productivity growth elsewhere, but not in Mexico. It will only result from inclusive institutions that effectively protect workers against risks, redistribute towards those in need, and simultaneously align entrepreneurs’ and workers’ incentives to raise productivity.

The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor energetically challenges the conventional wisdom of both the right and the left that underlies much of the contemporary debate over poverty and welfare policy. Author and national public policy expert Michael Tanner takes to task conservative critiques of a “culture of poverty” for their failure to account for the structural circumstances in which the poor live. In addition, he criticizes liberal calls for fighting poverty primarily through greater redistribution of wealth and new government programs. Rather than engaging in yet another debate over which government programs should be increased or decreased by billions of dollars, Tanner calls for an end to policies that have continued to push people into poverty. Combining social justice with limited government, his plan includes reforming the criminal justice system and curtailing the War on Drugs, bringing down the cost of housing, reforming education to give more control and choice to parents, and making it easier to bank, save, borrow, and invest. The comprehensive evidence provided in The Inclusive Economy is overwhelming: economic growth lifts more people out of poverty than any achievable amount of redistribution does. As Tanner notes, “we need a new debate, one that moves beyond our current approach to fighting poverty to focus on what works rather than on noble sentiments or good intentions.” The Inclusive Economy is a major step forward in that debate.

This paper considers various dimensions and sources of gender inequality and presents policies and best practices to address these. With women accounting for fifty percent of the global population, inclusive growth can only be achieved if it promotes gender equality. Despite recent progress, gender gaps remain across all stages of life, including before birth, and negatively impact health, education, and economic outcomes for women. The roadmap to gender equality has to rely on legal framework reforms, policies to promote equal access, and efforts to tackle entrenched social norms. These need to be set in the context of arising new trends such as digitalization, climate change, as well as shocks such as pandemics.

This authoritative book explains the sources and scale of current economic challenges and proposes solutions to craft a brighter future by building a sustainable, green, and inclusive society in the years ahead.

The result of two years work by 19 experienced policymakers and two Nobel prize-winning economists, 'The Growth Report' is the most complete analysis to date of the ingredients which, if used in the right country-specific recipe, can deliver growth and help lift populations out of poverty.

Azerbaijan has set the course for the economy to reduce its dependence on oil by promoting new drivers of growth. By 2025, under the government’s Strategic Roads Maps, a more diversified economy should take shape led by three sectors: agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing. Bold reforms need to strengthen areas of the economy that could otherwise impede this transition, and policy makers must resolutely stay on the reform path. The core message of this publication is diversification toward non-oil sources of growth alongside efforts to reduce macroeconomic risks and the high cost of finance, make the education system responsive to the needs of the labor market, close infrastructure gaps, and help economically significant state-owned enterprises become more efficient.

The rise of China is no doubt one of the most important events in world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. Mainstream economics, especially the institutional theory of economic development based on a dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions, is highly inadequate in explaining China's rise. This book argues that only a radical reinterpretation of the history of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West (as incorrectly portrayed by the institutional theory) can fully explain China's growth miracle and why the determined rise of China is unstoppable despite its current 'backward' financial system and political institutions. Conversely, China's spectacular and rapid transformation from an impoverished agrarian society to a formidable industrial superpower sheds considerable light on the fundamental shortcomings of the institutional theory and mainstream 'blackboard' economic models, and provides more-accurate reevaluations of historical episodes such as Africa's enduring poverty trap despite radical political and economic reforms, Latin America's lost decades and frequent debt crises, 19th century Europe's great escape from the Malthusian trap, and the Industrial Revolution itself.