Leapfrogging Development

Examines how developing countries have restructured their telecommunications in order to "leapfrog" or accelerate development.

This book examines the opportunities and constraints of environmental leapfrogging in Asia by zooming in on several country cases: China, Vietnam, Singapore and Taiwan. The world has witnessed the profound transformation of China, Vietnam, Taiwan and Singapore from impoverished developing regions into strong and internationally competitive economies. However, it has become obvious that their rapid development has come at a price. Contrary to their economic successes, these Asian economies have been much less successful in terms of ecological sustainability and environmental protection. Mega-cities, such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Ho Chi Minh City suffer from increased air pollution, traffic congestion and a boom in the generation of solid waste. The rapid industrialisation poses a dual challenge to the state. "Doing it right the first time" -- by installing clean technologies, developing the institutional capacity and the appropriate governance style to enforce environmental regulations- could lead to "leapfrogging", the development process and building industrial economies that are both competitive and more sustainable than economies with an older industrial base.

IT and the Internet have been seen as a way to enable developing countries to leapfrog over the development path and increase their rate of growth. This paper reviews the situation in India, where the government has strongly encouraged the development of information technology. Although the software sector has become a large and growing export industry there are still the general problems of poor infrastructure and low public investment alongside regulations and controls that can stifle growth. These factors will limit any leapfrogging as economic growth depends on complementary and complicated interactions.

This book elaborates upon the dynamic changes to Korean firms and the economy from the perspective of catch-up theory. The central premise of the book is that a latecomer’s sustained catch-up is not possible by simply following the path of the forerunners but by creating a new path or ‘leapfrogging’. In this sense, the idea of catch-up distinguishes itself from traditional views that focus on the role of the market or the state in development.

In this study, we look at the potential for development leaps in Africa in three key sectors that provided the basis for socioeconomic development around the world: health, education and agriculture. Advances in these sectors increase the human capital, create jobs and economic opportunities and have a positive influence on each other. Healthy and well-fed children can learn better; hygiene and better medical care diminish infant mortality, which reduces the desire for a large number of children; education for women promotes gender equality and causes birth rates to fall further. This creates a population structure under which the economy can grow particularly well: a demographic dividend becomes possible.

ABCDE 2011 presents papers from a global gathering of the world?s leading development scholars and practitioners held May 31 - June 2, 2010. Paper themes include: Environmental Commons and the Green Economy, Post-crisis Development Strategy, the Political Economy of Fragile States, Measuring Welfare, and Social Programs and Transfers.

After the miraculous economic growth known as the Beijing Consensus, China is now facing a slowdown. The attention has moved to the issue of the middle income trap. This book deals with this interesting issue in the context of China. It also discusses China's limitations and future prospects, especially after the rise of a new cold war between China and the US, namely the question of whether China would fall into another trap called the Thucydides trap, or conflict with the existing hegemon as a rising power. In sum, this book plays around three key terms, namely, the Beijing Consensus, the Middle Income Trap, and the Thucydides trap, and applies a Schumpeterian approach to these concepts. It also conducts a comparative analysis that examines China from an economic catch-up perspective. An economic catch-up starts from learning and imitating a forerunner, but finishing the race successfully requires taking a different path along the road. This act is also known as leapfrogging, which implies a latecomer doing something different from, and often ahead of, a forerunner. Technological leapfrogging may lead to technological catch-up, which means reducing the technological gap, and then finally to economic catch-up in living standards (per capita income) and economic size (GDP: economic power). This linkage from technological leapfrogging and catch-up to economic catch-up corresponds exactly with a similar linkage from the Beijing Consensus to escaping (or not) the middle income and the Thucydides traps. One conclusion from this book is that China's successful rise as a global industrial power has been due to its strategy of technological leapfrogging, which has enabled China to move beyond the middle income trap and possibly the Thucydides trap, although at a slower speed.

Confronted with pervasive and persistent inequalities, we must make room for bold new approaches that have the potential to deliver quality learning for all children and youth--not a century from now, but today. In Leapfrogging Inequality, researchers at the Brookings Institution chart a new path for global education by examining the possibility of leapfrogging--rapidly accelerating educational progress to ensure that all young people develop the skills they need to thrive in a fast-changing world. Analyzing a catalog of nearly 3,000 global education innovations, the largest such collection to date, researchers explore the potential of current practices to enable such a leap. As part of this analysis, the book presents an evidence-based framework for getting ahead in education, which it grounds in the here-and-now by narrating exemplary stories of innovation from around the world. .