Showing papers on "Developing country published in 1981"

Government Decentralization in Comparative Perspective: Theory and Practice in Developing Countries

Abstract: The need to decentralize development planning and management has become a recurring theme in the plans and policies of international assistance agencies and developing nations in recent years. With the shifting emphasis in development strategies toward promoting more socially equitable economic growth and meeting the basic needs of the poorest groups in developing societies, widespread participation in decision-making is considered essential to the development process, and decentralization has been advocated as a way of eliciting that participation.

Price Distortions in Agriculture and Their Effects: An International Comparison

Abstract: The central thesis of this paper is that agricultural pricing policies pursued by developing countries produce effects which are diametrically opposite to those produced by the pricing policies of many developed countries, and that the policies of both are costly in terms of global welfare. In general, the agricultural sector in developing countries is heavily taxed while that in the developed countries receives substantial price protection. The effects of agricultural price distortions on output, consumption, trade and rural employment are estimated for nine countries. In addition, the effects of price distortions on the distribution of income between producers and consumers, on government revenue and foreign exchange, and the net social losses of the policies are calculated. The results indicate that there are large income transfers and impacts on migration from the rural to the urban sector in developing countries and from the urban to the rural sector in developed economies.

Third World indebted industrialization: international finance and state capitalism in Mexico, Brazil, Algeria, and South Korea

Abstract: The past fifteen years have seen two important developments in the international economic system: the rapid industrialization of many less developed countries (LDCs) and their increasing indebtedness to private financial institutions. Massive bank loans have been used to fund industrial growth in many LDCs; international financial markets have replaced multinational corporations as the Third World's most important source of private foreign capital. In four major borrowing countries—Mexico, Brazil, Algeria, and South Korea—the process of indebted industrialization has its roots in the internationalization of finance, the increasing role of the state, and the use of funds raised on the international capital markets to finance industrial development. The results include rapid expansions of LDC industrial production and LDC exports of manufactured products, as well as the formation of an implicit partnership between private financial institutions and state-capitalist elites in the Third World.

The Taiwan Success Story: Rapid Growith With Improved Distribution In The Republic Of China, 1952-1979

Abstract: Economists and policymakers have long been perplexed over the way rapid growth appears to conflict with the other common goal of developing nations - more equitable income distribution. But economic expansion need not preclude equity, as demonstrated by the case of Taiwan, which experienced high rates of economic growth between the early 1950s and the late 1970s while simultaneously improving the distribution of income among its people. This book describes how the Republic of China managed this balancing of goals and analyzes the reasons for Taiwan's exceptional performance. The authors illustrate how full utilization of the country's vast human resources through emphasis on labor-intensive production has worked to make Taiwan's products competitive in international markets and to make fiscal redistribution after the fact unnecessary. They also cite Taiwan's early attention to land reform, to productivity in agriculture, and to the spread of decentralized rural industry as important factors in the country's achievements. They point out that, although the specifics may change, strategies and policy implications drawn from the Taiwan experience should be applicable in other developing countries.

Mortality in China

Abstract: these reported crude death rates have almost never been revealed, and the data could have been based on the total number of registered deaths compiled from localities throughout the whole country or only from selected areas of the country. Because of the possibility of serious underregistration of deaths or reliance on an unrepresentative sample of localities, analysts of China's population have been reluctant to take these reported death rates at face value. Infant mortality rates, as occasionally reported for cities or rural areas, are often implausibly low, so that serious underregistration of infant deaths in particular appears likely.2 Reported data on China's level of mortality have been scattered and of questionable validity, but data on the age pattern of mortality for the country as a whole have not been reported at all. It is likely that nationwide data on registered deaths by age were never collected until recently, and, therefore, that the government had no more idea of China's pattern of mortality since 1949 than foreign analysts.

Intra-firm trade and the developing countries

Abstract: Reasons for developing countries' concern with intrafirm trade are summarized. Existing sources of data are evaluated, and conceptual and definitional problems addressed. Existing data are employed to establish trends in developing countries' intrafirm trade; U.S. non-petroleum imports from majority-owned foreign affiliates in developing countries are a declining share of total U.S. such imports. Recommendations for further data collection and empirical research are offered.

The effect of female education on fertility: A simple explanation

Abstract: This paper investigates the structure of the relationship between female education and fertility. It is based on data published in First Country Reports of the World Fertility Surveys for eleven countries—Costa Rica, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Panama, Fiji, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia. The cumulative marital fertility of educated women is shown to be similar in different settings. A lack of uniformity in the education and fertility relationship including the curvilinear nature of this relationship observed across countries is shown to be attributable to marked differences between countries in the average fertility of women with no education rather than to the presumed differences in the average fertility of the educated women. The structure of the relationship is shown to be similar across several developing countries. This analysis suggests that advancement in female education can be expected to influence fertility behavior even without simultaneous changes in other factors such as increasing opportunity for participation in the paid labor force in the modem sector.

The New International Division of Labour

Abstract: The main thesis of this study is that the world economy is undergoing a profound structural change that is forcing companies to reorganize their production on a global scale. This is being brought about both through the relocation of production to new industrial sites, increasingly in the developing countries, and through the accelerated rationalisation measures at the traditional sites of industrial manufacture. The authors have designated this structural movement as 'the new international division of labour', and argue that it has led to the crisis that can be observed in industrial countries, as well as to the first steps towards export-oriented manufacturing in the developing countries. They see these trends as being largely independent of the policies pursued by individual governments and the strategies for expansion adopted by individual firms, and argue that the conditions currently prevailing in the capitalist world economy mean that the efforts of individual countries to devise economic policies to reduce industrial unemployment in the industrialised countries or to accentuate a balanced process of industrialisation in the developing countries are doomed to failure.

Rural Africa: modernization, equity, and long-term development.

Abstract: Prospects for rural development in sub-Saharan Africa appear to be much poorer than in the rest of the developing world, especially since the oil price increases. If present trends continue, African dependence on food imports will increase. Despite the rhetorical acknowledgment of the importance of the agricultural and rural sector, most African countries are not giving that sector the needed priority in their policies and budgets. Indeed, the rural sector is heavily taxed for the support of urban modernization. Large investments by foreign donors in the rural sector have had little overall effect. Donors need to adopt a longer perspective on development and to make greater efforts to promote indigenous capacities for policy, planning, and administration. Their investments need to be geared more to broad-based higher education and training and to transport and communications.

The world food situation and global grain prospects.

Abstract: The basic realities of the distribution of the world's population, wealth, and agricultural production base are not conducive to an automatic stabilizing process for the world's hungry. Increasing volatility in the world grain production in the 1980's could create a problem of major proportions. By 1990, the developed world will account for 24 percent of the world's population, 85 percent of the world's economic activity, and around 50 percent of the world's grain production and consumption. On a per capita basis, the developed world will consume nearly three times as much grain as the developing countries which account for three-fourths of the world's population. Increased food aid, which is essential, is not the solution to the basic problem. The low-income countries need a massive infusion of capital investment, research support, and education if they are to build infrastructures that have the capacity to produce, distribute, and market food supplies. Other options serve only to prolong and aggravate the current disparities.

Economic Equality and Fertility in Developing Countries.

Abstract: This book briefly reviews sociological, economic, and demographic literature pertaining to the relationship between income and fertility in developed and developing countries. He presents a conceptual framework to examine how fertility responds to changes in the distribution of household income. The analysis of data from Puerto Rico, Korea, and rural India is carefully executed, and conclusive policy implications are discussed. Originally published in 1979

Financial Repression and the Liberalisation Problem within Less-Developed Countries

Abstract: In less-developed countries, open markets for common stocks, bonds, mortgages, or even commercial bills are insignificant. This does not constitute a ‘distortion’, but merely reflects low per capita income and the resulting small scale of individual acts of saving and investment. Information is insufficient to have small farmers or merchants issue their own notes or shares that are publicly traded.

Manpower and international labor migration in the Middle East and North Africa. Final report for general distribution.

Abstract: This report is a shortened version of a World Bank funded research report which highlights migrant labor flows and labor market trends in the Middle East and North Africa from 1975-85 by projecting requirements for and supply of labor at a range of occupational levels for every major country of the region. The labor market projections were made under high and low economic growth scenarios and each countrys projected domestic labor supplies were matched to the requirements. International movement of migrant workers and their dependents was then simulated. The 9 capital rich states of Algeria Bahrain Iraq Kuwait Libya Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had imported 1.6 million migrant workers by 1975 and the number is expected to increase to 4.3 million by 1985. Between 1975-85 the proportion of Arabs among migrants is projected to fall from 65% to 48% although the number of Arab migrants will double. Increasing numbers of South Asian workers and the entry of South East Asian migrants will account for the reduced proportion of Arabs. Importation of workers in the oil exporting states excluding Algerian and Iraq from the above list has enabled the transformation of traditional states into modern economies in a short time and the scale and nature of development envisaged in these states will ensure that migrant workers remain a permanent or growing presence. Despite their contributions to development there is worry in the labor importing states about the scale of importation of workers who comprise over 90% of the labor force in some of the smallest states. The migrants are increasingly bringing their families to the countries of employment which is causing the labor importing countries to question their entire strategy of development with migrant labor. Labor importing countries have some scope for action in slowing their increased use of imported labor but in only a few instances will they be able to reduce their dependence on migrant workers. Migration for employent has had a major impact on the capital poor labor exporting states of Egypt Jordan Lebanon Sudan Syria the Yemens and Oman a minor supplier but thus far the sending countries have been able to exert little control over the departure or return of labor. The departure of large numbers of workers exacerbated shortages of skilled labor raised wage levels in some occupations and aggravated inflation. Unemployment has not disappeared in labor exporting countries because of the selective nature of migration but modern sector development and sometimes the traditional sector have suffered. Despite problems the labor migration process could be working to create an integrated economic region.

Strategies of Administrative Control and Contextual Constraints in a Less-Developed Country: The Case of Egyptian Public Enterprise

Abstract: Access to 31 state-owned organizations engaged in a variety of industries in Egypt enables the function of work organizations in a less-developed country to be examined. The utilization of public enterprises by government in political and developmental strategies has a considerable impact upon their form and authority. They are shown to be highly structured and highly centralized (using Aston measures) in a way similar to organizations in other socialist and developing countries. In addition, size and techno logy together appear to exert a bureaucratizing effect.

Reproductive behavior: Central and Eastern European experience

Abstract: The authors attempt to clarify the reproductive decision-making process and to assess the factors influencing reproductive behavior in the Socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Particular attention is paid to the effects of government policies. In Part 1 the authors present overviews of demographic trends the role of women the historical development of population policies abortion policies and private behavior and pro-natalist incentives. Part 2 consists of country reports on the Soviet Union Poland Yugoslavia Romania the German Democratic Republic Czechoslovakia Hungary Bulgaria and Albania. Each country report includes information on demographic trends: abortion and population policies; fertility planning including family research womens roles and family size intentions and actualities; fertility regulating behavior including contraceptive practice abortion trends and pro-natalist incentives; and sex and society including marriage sex education and adolescent sexuality. The final part of the book is a bibliography containing over 1000 references.

Infant mortality and the health of societies

Abstract: The rate of infant mortality in a country--or a subgroup within a country--is an important indication of social and economic status. High infant mortality is associated with environmental contamination lack of education discrimination against women poor health services and other factors which may persist even while per capita income is rising. Interventions aimed at improving infant survival will be effective if pursued in isolation; effective gains will arise from improvements in the indirect causes. While in developing countries infant mortality rates are generally between 10 and 20/1000 live births close to 200/1000 are common in Asia and Africa. However disparities are seen among countries with high and low per capita incomes showing that in some cases decent health does not need to wait for universal affluence while in others something is seriously wrong under the surface of economic prosperity. This latter problem is further underscored where infant mortality rates are rising despite high incomes or rapid economic growth. Chances of child survival depend both on the physical environment and the ability of families to control it--survival heavily depends on economic and personal resources especially those of mothers. Medical intervention must be within an appropriate context; more important is that a foundation for good health is laid in society at large. Preventive measures should focus on women likely to encounter problems in pregnancy and childbirth; screening procedures can be handled by paramedical workers at relatively low cost as in Sri Lanka and China. The emphasis on prevention has 2 aspects: a society can consider its resources well directed if little is spent on curing conditions that could have been prevented and the same actions that prevent infants from dying in the 1st year of life will guarantee them a higher quality of life as they mature.

The Political Economy of Agricultural Credit: The Case of Bolivi

Abstract: A theoretical framework is established to show that agricultural credit programs in less developed countries can be used for political purposes because of (a) government-controlled supply; (b) implicit income transfers associated with concessionary interest rates, delinquency, and inflation that can be used as patronage for politically influential borrowers; and (c) ease of implementation under guise of economic objectives. The framework is applied to Bolivia. Within that country's political context, large income transfers to a few influential farmers strongly suggest the importance of political factors in credit allocation with consequent effects on income distribution, development, and debilitation of financial institutions.

Energy Strategies for Developing Nations

Abstract: If the oil-importing developing countries are to reduce their dependence on costly imports and maintain economic development, they will have to increase domestic energy supplies. But which energy resources are most appropriate in the developing-country context? And can traditional rural energy sources such as firewood and farm wastes be increased without seriously affecting agricultural productivity and environmental quality? In this book, four energy specialists survey the energy problems confronting the developing nations and recommend general approaches---energy strategies---toward making the problems more manageable.Energy Strategies for Developing Nations seeks to illuminate energy problems and strategies for managing them in ways helpful to developing-area planners and to those in industrial countries and international organizations concerned with the interwoven objectives of maintaining economic development and achieving a successful long-term energy transition for the world as a whole.

Can Developing‐country Exports Keep Growing in the 1980s?

Abstract: This paper reports on the initial findings of the program of studies on the impact of developing-country exports of manufactures on the market of the principal industrial countries. A discussion of the liberal-protectionist balance leads to the conclusion that, while quantitative assessments have been made of the decrease of protection through tariff reductions in the 1970's, it has not been possible to measure the increases in protection resulting from various other measures. It seems that the resurgence of non-tariff protectionism in the 1970s has not destroyed the liberal gains of earlier decades. Analysis of market penetration suggests the industrial countries' market for LDC manufactures is large and still growing. It appears that the liberal-protectionist balance in the 1980s will be critical, particularly for lower income and less successful developing countries. Policies to make liberal attitudes to trade dominant are suggested.

Agricultural development in Kenya

Abstract: In most of Africa agricultural production has declined since independence and the continent today faces serious food shortages. In this article Prof T J Bembridge, Head of the Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development at the University of Fort Hare, who recently visited Kenya, surveys agricultural development there and concludes that it probably surpasses that of any developing country in Africa.