Resource Constraints And Global Growth

With substantial risks arising from resource constraints on global growth, serious questions are being posed about how a scarcity of finite resources may impact global social and political fragility. The research which forms the core of this book focuses on how this scarcity will impact the financial sector, especially through insurance, pension and banking activities. The UK finance sector, which is considered to be amongst the most globalised, is placed under the microscope, and its approaches to food and oil are particularly noteworthy. Interviews with senior financial experts are analysed alongside more traditional quantitative economic analysis to explore potential future impacts, the scope of natural resource constraints and their impact on the economy.

Examines the factors which limit human economic and population growth and outlines the steps necessary for achieving a balance between population and production. Bibliogs

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.

Recently, the public attention has turned toward the intricate interrelation between economic growth and global warming. This book focuses on this nexus but broadens the framework to study the issue. Growth is seen as global growth, which affects the global environment and climate change. Global growth, in particular high economic growth rates, imply a fast depletion of renewable and non-renewable resources. Thus this book deals with the impact of the environment and the effect of the exhaustive use of natural resources on economic growth and welfare of market economies as well as the reverse linkage. It is arranged in three parts: Part I of the book discusses the environment and growth. There, Greiner and Semmler incorporate the role of environmental pollution into modern endogenous growth models and use recently developed dynamic methods and techniques to derive appropriate abatement activities that policymakers can institute. Part II looks at global climate change using these same growth models. Here, too, the authors provide direct and transparent policy implications. More specifically, the authors favour tax measures, such as a carbon tax, over emission trading as instruments of mitigation policies. Part III evaluates the use and overuse of renewable and non-renewable resources in the context of a variety of dynamic models. They, in particular, consider the cases when resources interact as an ecological system and analyze issues of ownership of resources as well as policy measures to avoid the overuse of resources. In addition, not only intertemporal resource allocation but also the eminent issues relating to intertemporal inequities, as well as policy measures to overcome them, are discussed in each part of the book.

As emphasized by Hausmann, Rodrik and Velasco, the policy challenge of boosting growth requires prioritization and identifying what are the most binding constraints. This paper draws on firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, which suggests that the obstacles for the functioning of firms is related to firm size. Recognizing the potential endogeneity and simultaneity between firms' constraints and firm size, we implement an Ordered-Probit model with a potential categorical endogenous regressor to estimate, for the case of Bolivia, the conditional probability of facing obstacles given the firm size category, while controlling for other factors. The results confirm the importance of allowing for the roles of firm size in identifying constraints and suggest priorities for policies to remove constraints to economic performance.

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.

"All in all, this is an excellent work on trade, growth and especially international investment with a unified theme. S.M. Murshed, The Economic Journal" This book is an impressive contribution to the literature on North-South models of international economic relations, and their implications for development. Scott MacDonald, The World Economy "The challenge of providing a simple yet illuminating and integrated analysis of trade, development and international capital flows is, clearly, a daunting one. Lynn Mainwaring has nevertheless met that challenge well in this impressive book. Ian Steedman, University of Manchester, UKThis important new book critically examines the argument that structural asymmetries between the rich, industrialised countries of the global" north" or "centre" and the poor, largely primary-producing countries of the" south" or "periphery" could be responsible for an unequal division of the gains from international trade and investment. It explores this view by developing a model of Centre-Periphery relations using building blocks provided by Sraffa, Leontief, Pasinetti, Goodwin and others.

This study surveys the prospects worldwide for food and agriculture, including fisheries and forestry, for the next 20 years. Emphasis is placed on food security and nutrition, and the improved sustainability of agricultural and rural development.

Collected here are papers from the conference, Thinking Outward, which dealt with a range of issues related to the key players in this process - firms, home countries and host countries and the book will have a foreword from Jeffrey Sachs. In the wake of the financial crisis, these issues remain increasingly critical for developing countries.