Towards New Developmentalism

The global financial and economic crisis starting in 2007 has provoked the exploration of alternatives to neo-liberalism. Although neo-liberalism has been critiqued from various perspectives, these critiques have not coalesced into a concrete alternative in development economics literature. The main objective of this book is to name and formulate this alternative, identify what is new about this viewpoint, and project it on to the academic landscape. This book includes contributions from many prominent development economists who are unified by a form of "developmental pragmatism". Their concern is with the problems of development that preoccupied the pioneers of economic development in the mid-twentieth century, known as the developmentalists. Like the developmentalists, the contributors to Towards New Developmentalism are policy-oriented and supportive of institutional development and engagement with economic globalization. This collection has an over-arching concern with promoting social justice, and holds the general view of the market as the means to affecting an alternative program of development rather than as a master whose dictates are to be obeyed without question. This important collection sets the agenda for new developmentalism, drawing on issues such as industrial policy, technology, competition, growth and poverty. In broad terms, the economic development debate is cast in terms of whether the market is the master, an ideological neo-liberal perspective, or the means to affect change as suggested by the pragmatic perspective that is being termed neo-developmentalism. This book will be valuable reading to postgraduates and researchers specialising in the area of development studies including within economics, international relations, political science and sociology.

Developmental Macroeconomics: Access to Demand, the Exchange Rate and Growth offers a new approach to development economics and macroeconomics. It is a Keynesian-structuralist approach to economics applied to middle income countries that emphasizes the strategic role of demand in creating investment opportunities that are essential to economic development. It also explores crucial links between short-term full employment and financial stability with medium term growth. While this book emphasizes the central role played by the exchange rate it does not ignore other macroeconomic prices (the interest rate, the inflation rate and the profit rate). It develops a group of concepts and models and blends them together in the model of the tendency to the cyclical overvaluation of the exchange rate in developing countries. According to this model, the exchange rate tends to be chronically overvalued. In so far that this is true the exchange rate ceases to be just a short-term problem to be treated by macroeconomics and becomes central to development economics and should be crucially oriented to manage the exchange rate and keep it competitive at the industrial equilibrium level. The book closes with the presentation of new developmentalism – a national development strategy based on the system of models previously discussed that is both an alternative to old national-developmentalism and to liberal orthodoxy or the Washington consensus.

Following the 2007–2009 financial and economic crises, there has been an unprecedented demand among economics students for an alternative approach, which offers a historical, institutional and multidisciplinary treatment of the discipline. Economic development lends itself ideally to meet this demand, yet most undergraduate textbooks do not reflect this. This book will fill this gap, presenting all the core material needed to teach development economics in a one semester course, while also addressing the need for a new economics and offering flexibility to instructors. Rather than taking the typical approach of organizing by topic, the book uses theories and debates to guide its structure. This will allow students to see different perspectives on key development questions, and therefore to understand more fully the contested nature of many key areas of development economics. The book can be used as a standalone textbook on development economics, or to accompany a more traditional text.

Complementarities between political and economic institutions have kept Brazil in a low-level economic equilibrium since 1985.

The author examines new development strategies in the context of globalisation and the crisis of the Washington Consensus. Critiquing both protectionism and the free market he points to the influence and evolution of Keynesian ideas for the management and stabilisation of development in an era marked by the unravelling of neoliberal prosperity.

This book studies the experiences of Brazil and India, the major economic powerhouses of the 21st century, during the neoliberal era. Both the nations have become important players in global markets and their economic performance has captured the attention of policymakers and academicians across the world. The book explores the patterns of growth and the changing status of human development in the two regions, since the 1980s. In an attempt to better grasp the subtleties of their developmental experiences, it also highlights the political and institutional dynamics that have under girded the liberalization of the two countries.

By any indicator, Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation on earth, is a development success story. Yet 20 years after a deep economic and political crisis, it is still in some respects an economy in transition. The country recovered from the 1997–98 crisis and navigated the path from authoritarian to democratic rule surprisingly quickly and smoothly. It survived the 2008–09 global financial crisis and the end of the China-driven commodity super boom in 2014 with little difficulty. It is now embarking on its fifth round of credible national elections in the democratic era. It is in the process of graduating to the upper middle-income ranks. But, as the 25 contributors to this comprehensive and compelling volume document, Indonesia also faces many daunting challenges — how to achieve faster economic growth along with more attention to environment sustainability, how to achieve more equitable development outcomes, how to develop and nurture stronger institutional foundations, and much else. “This is a timely and much-needed book. There are very few recent books on Indonesia with such a comprehensive analysis of not just mainstream economic policies, but also most importantly the key issues of human capital, inequality, social welfare, labour, food security and natural resource management. This book will not only be crucial for policy discourse but for all stakeholders who care about Indonesia making the transition not only to a high-income economy, but an inclusive one.” — Mari Pangestu, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia “The Indonesian Economy in Transition: Policy Challenges in the Jokowi Era and Beyond is one of the most important books that discusses the Indonesian economy post–Asian Financial Crisis. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Indonesian economy.” — M. Chatib Basri, former Minister of Finance of Indonesia

This timely book offers a concise summary of new developmentalism, exploring this in the context of both heterodox economics and political economy. It adopts a historical–structural method that is critical of orthodox or Neoclassical Economics. Luis Carlos Bresser-Pereira delves into the roots of new developmentalism from the quasi-stagnation of middle-income countries, covering how it developed from Marxian economics, post-Keynesian economics and Classical Structuralism.