Building Capabilities for Productive Development

Building Capabilities for Productive Development
Author: Jorge Cornick
Publisher: Inter-American Development Bank
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2018-06-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1597823171

Productive development policies (PDPs) are notoriously hard. They involve a daunting level of technical detail, require public-private collaboration, are in constant danger of capture, and demand time consistency hard to achieve in a politically volatile region. Nevertheless, the potential of PDPs to revitalize the region’s economic performance and spur productivity growth cannot be ignored. This book takes an in-depth look at 17 cases involving productive development agencies from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Uruguay, identifying key features of institutional design and agency-level practices that make success more likely in this difficult policy arena. Careful study of these experiences might help successful productive development policies gain currency across the region. The cases in this book should not be seen as the exceptions that prove the rule of lackluster PDP performance, but rather as examples that demonstrate the rule can be broken.

Technology and Industrial Development in Japan

Technology and Industrial Development in Japan
Author: Hiroyuki Odagiri
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 1996
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780198288022

This book studies the industrial development of Japan since the mid-nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on how the various industries built technological capabilities. The Japanese were extraordinarily creative in searching out and learning to use modern technologies, and the authors investigate the emergence of entrepreneurs who began new and risky businesses, how the business organizations evolved to cope with changing technological conditions, and how the managers, engineers, and workers acquired organizational and technological skills through technology importation, learning-by-doing, and their own R & D activities. The book investigates the interaction between private entrepreneurial activities and public policy, through a general examination of economic and industrial development, a study of the evolution of management systems, and six industrial case studies: textile, iron and steel, electrical and communications equipment, automobiles, shipbuilding and aircraft, and pharmaceuticals. The authors show how the Japanese government has played an important supportive role in the continuing innovation, without being a substitute for aggressive business enterprise constantly venturing into unfamiliar terrains.

Building State Capability

Building State Capability
Author: Matt Andrews
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2017
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0198747489

Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don't learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability. This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity building efforts. The book then analyses this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back - particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look more capable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past.

Rethinking Productive Development

Rethinking Productive Development
Author: Inter-American Development Bank
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2014-09-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1137393998

Productive transformation requires seizing the opportunities available and opening new ones in a competitive world. Rethinking Productive Development examines the market failures impeding transformation and the government failures that may make the policy remedies worse than the market illness. To address market failures, the authors propose a simple conceptual framework based on the scope and nature of the policy approach. They then systematically analyze country policies through this lens in key areas such as innovation, new firms, financing, human capital, and internationalization to show the power of this way of thinking. Still, the book warns that policymakers cannot be sure what the right policy interventions are and must set up a process to discover them that calls for public-private collaboration. Recognizing that the risk of capture needs to be checked and that even the best policies will fail without the technical, organizational, and political capacity to implement them, the book concludes with ideas on how to design institutions fostering the right incentives and how to grow public sector capabilities over time.

Creating Capabilities

Creating Capabilities
Author: Martha C. Nussbaum
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674252780

If a country’s Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world’s billions of individuals are really managing? In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model. It demonstrates a path to justice for both humans and nonhumans, weighs its relevance against other philosophical stances, and reveals the value of its universal guidelines even as it acknowledges cultural difference. In our era of unjustifiable inequity, Nussbaum shows how—by attending to the narratives of individuals and grasping the daily impact of policy—we can enable people everywhere to live full and creative lives.

Technological Infrastructure Policy

Technological Infrastructure Policy
Author: Morris Teubal
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9401587396

Technological Infrastructure Policy provides a systematic treatment of technological infrastructure (TI) and Technological Infrastructure Policy (TIP) which are emerging fields of interest both for academic economists and for policy makers in both advanced and developing economies. The specific topics covered include: the role of TI in economic growth and development; the nature and definition of TI; TI-components; the relationships between TI and markets; salient features of TIP. Technological Infrastructure Policy reflects the distinction made between basic and advanced TI. Basic TI involves the collective absorption of foreign technology for subsequent diffusion to domestic firms. Several chapters explicitly deal with this process with an emphasis on the supply of advisory services to small and medium enterprises. Advanced TI involves precompetitive, cooperation research and development in cutting edge technologies undertaken by consortia of firms. Several examples of advanced TIP are given. The novel integration of various conceptual and practical aspects of TI and TIP is the strong point of this book.

Workers, Managers, Productivity

Workers, Managers, Productivity
Author: Akio Hosono
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2020-02-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9811503648

This open access book provides a glimpse into the Japanese management technique known as “Kaizen,” and the ways it has been disseminated around the developing world. The novelty of this book is three-fold: it provides a contextualized view of the mechanisms of initiatives implementing Kaizen in developing countries; compared with productivity studies, it places the relationship between workers and managers at the center of inquiry, reflecting the intent of SDG8 concerning decent work and economic growth; and it provides an overview of the heterogeneity of Kaizen in terms of geography and firm size. This book explores how improving management techniques can support firms’ productivity and quality. Given its wide range of case studies from across Africa, Asia and Latin America, this book will be of value to scholars, policymakers and advocates of sustainable development alike.

Transforming Economies

Transforming Economies
Author: José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs
Publisher:
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2014-05-05
Genre: Developed countries
ISBN: 9789221285663

This book helps connect the dots between economic theory, the role of capabilities, the lessons from history and the practical challenges of design and implementation of industrial policies. In so doing it provides an excellent policy roadmap for anyone interested in the challenge of promoting catch-up growth and productive transformation.

The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Hubs and Economic Development

The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Hubs and Economic Development
Author: Arkebe Oqubay
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1370
Release: 2020-07-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0192590944

Industrialization supported by industrial hubs has been widely associated with structural transformation and catch-up. But while the direct economic benefits of industrial hubs are significant, their value lies first and foremost in their contribution as incubators of industrialization, production and technological capability, and innovation. The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Hubs and Economic Development adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine the conceptual underpinnings, review empirical evidence of regions and economies, and extract pertinent lessons for policy reasearchers and practitioners on the key drivers of success and failure for industrial hubs. This Handbook illustrates the diverse and complex nature of industrial hubs and shows how they promote industrialization, economic structural transformation, and technological catch-up. It explores the implications of emerging issues and trends such as environmental protection and sustainability, technological advancement, shifts in the global economy, and urbanization.

The Capability Approach

The Capability Approach
Author: Francesca Panzironi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2012-07-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136297855

This book provides a unique laboratory of ‘capabilities in practice’ in the Asia-Pacific region. It explores the application of the capability approach in development practice and public policy from a multidisciplinary perspective by bringing together scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including development studies, health policy, political science, political theory, political economy, architecture, indigenous studies, urban planning and communication technologies. The first part of the book provides a foundational theoretical framework to introduce the empirical applications of the capability theory in different areas of development practice and public policy in the Asia-Pacific region. This part discusses thorny issues in capability theory and raises the potential for capability theory to lead to new ways of thinking about old problems. The second part discusses the application of the capability approach to intransigent problems of marginalisation and the articulation of public policy in New Zealand and Australia. In particular, this part focuses on the potential implications that a capability-based approach can have on the well-being of indigenous peoples in both countries, as well as children, older renters, and urban dwellers in Australia. The third part elucidates how capability theory is being applied by researchers in the Asia-Pacific region to local issues in developing countries such as Samoa, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka. In doing so, it provides original content to the world market in capability theory by focussing on this often-neglected area of scholarship. As a whole, this volume offers a unique and innovative scrutiny of a multifaceted capability-based analysis of development practice and public policy. The scope and breadth of this volume advance the application of the capability approach and offer an indispensable resource to scholars, researchers, policy makers and policy practitioners interested in the theoretical insights and practical implications of the capability approach.