The Knowledge Capital of Nations

The Knowledge Capital of Nations
Author: Eric A. Hanushek
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2023-08-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 026254895X

A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.

The Performance of Nations

The Performance of Nations
Author: Jacek Kugler
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2012-09-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442217065

Why do some nations fail while others succeed? How can we compare the political capacity of a totalitarian regime to a democracy? Are democracies always more efficient? The Performance of Nations answers these key questions by providing a powerful new tool for measuring governments’ strengths and weaknesses. Allowing researchers to look inside countries down to the local level as well as to compare across societies and over time, the book demonstrates convincingly that political performance is the missing link in measuring power and military capability. This groundbreaking work will be an essential resource for scholars, policymakers, and institutions interested in measuring the political capacities of nations and in knowing where foreign aid and investment will be most effective.

Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail
Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Currency
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2013-09-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0307719227

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

Global Productivity

Global Productivity
Author: Alistair Dieppe
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2021-06-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464816093

The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global economy after a decade that featured a broad-based slowdown in productivity growth. Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies presents the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution and drivers of productivity growth, examines the effects of COVID-19 on productivity, and discusses a wide range of policies needed to rekindle productivity growth. The book also provides a far-reaching data set of multiple measures of productivity for up to 164 advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies, and it introduces a new sectoral database of productivity. The World Bank has created an extraordinary book on productivity, covering a large group of countries and using a wide variety of data sources. There is an emphasis on emerging and developing economies, whereas the prior literature has concentrated on developed economies. The book seeks to understand growth patterns and quantify the role of (among other things) the reallocation of factors, technological change, and the impact of natural disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is must-reading for specialists in emerging economies but also provides deep insights for anyone interested in economic growth and productivity. Martin Neil Baily Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution Former Chair, U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers This is an important book at a critical time. As the book notes, global productivity growth had already been slowing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and collapses with the pandemic. If we want an effective recovery, we have to understand what was driving these long-run trends. The book presents a novel global approach to examining the levels, growth rates, and drivers of productivity growth. For anyone wanting to understand or influence productivity growth, this is an essential read. Nicholas Bloom William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University The COVID-19 pandemic hit a global economy that was already struggling with an adverse pre-existing condition—slow productivity growth. This extraordinarily valuable and timely book brings considerable new evidence that shows the broad-based, long-standing nature of the slowdown. It is comprehensive, with an exceptional focus on emerging market and developing economies. Importantly, it shows how severe disasters (of which COVID-19 is just the latest) typically harm productivity. There are no silver bullets, but the book suggests sensible strategies to improve growth prospects. John Fernald Schroders Chaired Professor of European Competitiveness and Reform and Professor of Economics, INSEAD

Global Political Economy and the Wealth of Nations

Global Political Economy and the Wealth of Nations
Author: Phillip Anthony O'Hara
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2004
Genre: Capitalism
ISBN: 9780415296533

Documents the major processes, performance, institutions, problems and policies associated with global political economy. This book present an analysis of the changing distribution and production of wealth throughout the world, the global technological revolution, and a special study of Asia and Eastern Europe in the world system.

The Rise and Decline of Nations

The Rise and Decline of Nations
Author: Mancur Olson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300157673

A leading political economist advances a new theory to explain the postwar shifts in the relative economic fortunes and positions of various nations and regions.

The Public Wealth of Nations

The Public Wealth of Nations
Author: Dag Detter
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2016-02-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113751986X

We have spent the last three decades engaged in a pointless and irrelevant debate about the relative merits of privatization or nationalization. We have been arguing about the wrong thing while sitting on a goldmine of assets. Don’t worry about who owns those assets, worry about whether they are managed effectively. Why does this matter? Because despite the Thatcher/ Reagan economic revolution, the largest pool of wealth in the world – a global total that is much larger than the world’s total pensions savings, and ten times the total of all the sovereign wealth funds on the planet – is still comprised of commercial assets that are held in public ownership. If professionally managed, they could generate an annual yield of 2.7 trillion dollars, more than current global spending on infrastructure: transport, power, water, and communications. Based on both economic research and hands-on experience from many countries, the authors argue that publicly owned commercial assets need to be taken out of the direct and distorting control of politicians and placed under professional management in a ‘National Wealth Fund’ or its local government equivalent. Such a move would trigger much-needed structural reforms in national economies, thus resurrect strained government finances, bolster ailing economic growth, and improve the fabric of democratic institutions. This radical, reforming book was named one of the "Books of the Year".by both the FT and The Economist.

Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance

Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
Author: Douglass C. North
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 164
Release: 1990-10-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521397346

An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.

Development Centre Studies Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run

Development Centre Studies Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run
Author: Maddison Angus
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1998-09-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9264163557

The study provides a major reassessment of the scale and scope of China’s resurgence over the past half century, employing quantitative measurement techniques which are standard practice in OECD countries, but which have not hitherto been available for China.