Development, Duality, and the International Economic Regime

When Gustav Ranis began his scholarly career in the field of economic development, the global economy presented a landscape of widely contrasting conditions for its participants. Almost two-thirds of the global population was ill-fed, ill-housed, illiterate, and lacking access to proper medical care. Today, four decades later, while standards of living have generally improved, and some areas of Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East have become highly productive economies, the gap between the wealthy few and the rest of the world has widened. Very significant areas of the globe remain desperately poor. In a much-needed effort to assess the current issues facing developing countries and development economics, Ranis's former students, present and past colleagues at Yale, and fellow development economists honor him with this volume. Contributors examine and evaluate four areas of concern: duality and the evolution of labor markets in developing economies; trade, technological transfer, and economic development; the international economic regime and economic development; and finance and economic development. Among many new findings, several essays present evidence that duality in labor markets may be self-perpetuating absent selective government intervention. Others find that, contrary to earlier conjectures, trade liberalization will have more than just a one-time impact on national economic performance. Still others suggest that using a nominal exchange rate anchor as a tool of stabilization policy in developing economies is fraught with difficulties. Contributors include Albert Berry, Willem Buiter, Jonathan Eaton, Robert Evenson, Gary Fields, Mark Gersovitz, Koichi Hamada, Yujiro Hayami, Samuel Kortum, Anne Krueger, Poori Marino, Richard Nelson, Jennifer C. O'Hara, Keijiro Otsuka, Howard Pack, Janet Rothenberg Pack, Jonathan Putnam, Mark Rosenzweig, Gary Saxonhouse, T. N. Srinivasan, Frances Stewart, Joseph Stiglitz, and Brian Wright.