Promoting Innovation Productivity And Industrial Growth And Reducing Poverty

Development and the ending of mass poverty require a massive increase in productive capabilities and production in developing countries. Some countries, notably in Asia, are achieving this. Yet ‘pro-poor’ aid policies, especially for the least developed countries, operate largely without reference to policy thinking on the promotion of innovation for productivity growth. Conversely, policy-makers and researchers on innovation and industrial policies tend to know little about the potential for social protection to support innovation and productivity improvement. This book aims to focus attention on this gulf between research on innovation and on poverty reduction and to identify some of its policy consequences; to set out some ways in which this gulf can be bridged, analytically and empirically; and to contribute to the creation of an agenda for further research and an understanding of the urgency of the implied rethinking. The first two chapters provide sustained arguments for embedding social policy thinking in much more ‘productivist’ frameworks of thought that focus on raising productivity and employment; and for identifying growth theories that can incorporate satisfactory understandings of innovation and employment upgrading. A set of chapters then tackle these broad themes in the context of health, addressing the interlinked issues of innovation, health inequity and associated impoverishment. The final set of chapters examines the challenge of creating industrial policies that generate both innovation and employment, using and going beyond concepts of systems of innovation.

This book summarizes, and highlights main messages from, a February 2007 Global Forum convened by the World Bank to discuss strategies, programs, and policies for building science, technology and innovation (STI) capacity to promote sustainable growth and poverty reduction in developing countries.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

Trade will have an important role at the global level in generating the growth necessary for reducing extreme poverty to 3 percent and boosting prosperity for the poorest 40 percent by 2030. To identify the most important challenges that exist in maximizing the positive impact of trade on poverty, we need to understand who the poor are, where they are, and what economic activities they undertake. To this end, the study highlights particularly relevant dimensions of poverty: rural poverty in remote areas, informality, fragile and conflict situations, and women. For each of these issues, this study considers the main traderelated barriers and challenges, along with policy responses to address them. It shows the importance of the multilateral trading system and of the Doha Round, as well as the important role of the WBG and WTO in promoting coherence and implementing trade policies in a way that delivers the greatest possible benefits for the poor.

Focusing on pro-poor growth and income poverty, Promoting Pro-Poor Growth: Policy Guidance for Donors identifies binding constraints and offers policies and strategies to address them.

Is there a tradeoff between raising growth and reducing inequality and poverty? This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the complex links between growth, inequality, and poverty, with causation going in both directions. The evidence suggests that growth can be effective in reducing poverty, but its impact on inequality is ambiguous and depends on the underlying sources of growth. The impact of poverty and inequality on growth is likewise ambiguous, as several channels mediate the relationship. But most plausible mechanisms suggest that poverty and inequality reduce growth, at least in the long run. Policies play a role in shaping these relationships and those designed to improve equality of opportunity can simultaneously improve inclusiveness and growth.

Ways in which poverty can be reduced in both countries and regions through business, entrepreneurship and government has been a hot issue for researchers and policymakers in recent years. Governments can play an important role in helping the poor people by non-profit organizations and others that help to seed business among the poor. Businesses increasingly also see the large number of people in severe poverty not only as an issue for social concern, but also as a potentially large untapped market of consumers for goods and services. Some scholars have called for poverty reduction through entrepreneurship owing to the fact that it can be an efficient path to also change the poor's attitudes and behaviours from a passive mode, to a more active mode towards poverty reduction economically and socially. In addition, the sharing economy brings opportunities where everyone is a micro-entrepreneur. There is a recognition that these types of entrepreneurship above could offer the greatest single potential means to move individuals out of poverty in the nations and regions in the next 5-10 years. This book provides new and valuable analyses of poverty and business, entrepreneurship and innovation in current nations and regions including developing and developed countries. As business, entrepreneurship and innovation can help to generate greater business activity in settings of severe poverty, they will help to solve poverty, as individuals in severe poverty are able to both generate greater incomes and accumulate greater assets as they participate with large firms in those activities. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Entrepreneurship & Regional Development.