Economic Development And Export Growth

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

A robust empirical determinant of long-term economic growth in many developing countries has been the expansion and diversification of the export sector. The latter, in turn, has been influenced by capital accumulation and economic growth. The growth model developed here explores this interdependence in the context of the “new growth theory”. The analytical results are consistent with empirical regularities observed in the exports-economic growth linkages. The paper also derives a formula for the optimal rate of return to capital in the presence of learning effects and improvement of human resources brought about by export expansion and its interaction with saving and investment.

There is growing consensus in the literature that trade and trade policy matter for a pro-poor growth and development strategy. Therefore, policies that are consistent with this strategy feature increasingly in many African countries where poverty is endemic and rapid and where sustainable economic growth is viewed as the major vehicle for poverty reduction. Key elements of these polices include measures that promote the expansion and diversification of production and trade in Africa. This book is aimed at articulating appropriate structural and policy measures for eliminating the constraints that African countries face and thus ensuring that they can derive maximum benefits from all available market access opportunities. There is evidence that most African countries face external market access barriers in their major export destinations which are generally less constraining than those confronting countries in other developing country regions. Yet, they have generally not been able to take full advantage of the special (preferential) market access opportunities available to them. This suggests that improved external market access, whether reciprocal or preferential, would not, by itself, be sufficient for strengthening African export performance. In this collection, export supply response capacity takes external (beyond-the-border) factors as given and concentrates primarily on the internal (behind-the-border) factors that influence production and distribution costs and, thus, competitiveness. The central working hypothesis of this book is that the inability of domestic producers and exporters in Africa to respond quickly, effectively and efficiently to external market access opportunities is caused by various limitations of their internal supply capacity and that this, in turn, is largely responsible for the lacklustre export performance of many African countries. This comprehensive study should be of interest to students and researchers of international trade and development economics as well as African studies.

International trade in 2009 is projected to contract for the first time since 1982. As a result, export diversifi cation has gained new urgency as one way of using exports to recover lost growth momentum. Moreover, diversifi cation is central to reducing income volatility and sustaining high growth rates, which are especially important for countries with large populations living in poverty. In the 1950s, countries became concerned that their dependence on primary products would lead to steady falls in the purchasing power of primary exports and thus slow growth. A major policy objective of developing countries since that time has been to diversify out of primary products into manufactures. Although some nations have been at least partially successful, many low-income countries remain dependent on a narrow range of primary products. 'Breaking Into New Markets' argues for a comprehensive view of diversifi cation. It explores new thinking and evidence about export diversifi cation and elaborates on policies for its promotion. These policies span tariffs and taxes, services, and government activities to help fi rms take advantage of global opportunities. The book is a compilation of chapters written as short, policy-focused pieces. Many digest longer, more academic papers in an effort to make the information accessible to a larger policy and nontechnical audience. In that sense, the book is a policy primer on what export diversifi cation can and cannot do for growth and how to make diversifi cation happen. Intelligently designed policies that effi ciently address the obstacles to export growth are critical for overall economic growth and poverty reduction. This book offers insights useful to policy makers and practitioners as they embark on efforts to design new programs of competitiveness in their trade strategies.

Although Latin American and Caribbean countries have assigned a high priority to increasing exports, export performance in most cases remains deficient. This work investigates why this is so, identifying the policies that determine successes and failures in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

This book provides an excellent resource for understanding the forces in international trade liberalization over two centuries that have brought us to this point, where the successes, setbacks and the countervailing forces now vie for the public's mind and support: the outcome of which will determine the future progress of increased globalization, or lack thereof. The book also examines whether trade policy has indeed promoted exports in the vast number of countries which increasingly look to trade agreements to gain a competitive edge, and to what extent export-driven growth has been an important force in advancing economic development around the world. In doing so, the book examines one of the most controversial issues in economic development: the promotion and significance of export-led growth.