Welfare Economics Political Economy And Policy Reform In Ghana

Global development actors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund claim that the shift to the poverty reduction strategy framework and emphasis on local participation address the social cost of earlier adjustment programs and help put aid-receiving countries back in control of their own development agenda. Drawing on the case of Ghana, Lord Mawuko-Yevugah argues that this shift and the emphasis on partnerships between donors and poor countries, local participation, and country ownership simultaneously represents a substantive departure from earlier versions of neo-liberalism and an attempt by global development actors and local governing and social elites to justify, and legitimize the neo-liberal policy paradigm. This book shows how the new architecture of aid has important implications in three distinct but related ways: the discursive construction and production of post-colonial societies; the changing focus of Western aid and development policy interventions; and the reproduction of the politics of inclusive exclusion. The author provides detailed and original research on the new development paradigm and develops a critical theoretical approach to re-think conventional analyses of the new discourses on aid whilst offering a fresh, alternative interpretation of changes in international aid relations.

This textbook integrates three related fields in economics, namely agricultural/forestry economics, environmental economics, and international trade, by foregrounding cost-benefit analysis as a significant policy tool. Exploring how welfare measures can be used in the analysis of agricultural, trade, and other economic policies, Applied Welfare Economics, Trade, and Agricultural Policy Analysis fills a gap in the literature on agricultural policy analysis by explaining the economic efficiency improvements and income transfers of various agricultural policy reforms in the United States, Canada, and the European Union. G. Cornelis van Kooten addresses methods of identifying and measuring economic surpluses (costs and benefits), the precautionary principle, identification of an appropriate discount rate, the importance of non-market values, and the role of agriculture in trade negotiations and climate change. Applied Welfare Economics, Trade, and Agricultural Policy Analysis draws on new research, brings attention to the existing literature, and includes review questions that challenge programming skills. The techniques developed in this text can be applied to the development and reform of agricultural policies in various regions in response to trade negotiations and many other situations involving government policy.

Weighing in on the euro-austerity debate, this book uses case studies from three countries to evaluate the distinctive politics of fiscal policy and welfare state reform during a key period in Europe.

This report provides insights on the political economy of biodiversity related policy reforms. It draws on existing literature and four new case studies covering the French tax on pesticides, agricultural subsidy reform in Switzerland, EU payments to Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau to...

By looking at 20 reform efforts in ten OECD countries, this report examines why some reforms are implemented and other languish.

Citing a paucity of empirical evidence on the poverty and distributional impacts of trade policy reform in Ghana as the main motivation for this volume, the editors (both of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the U. of Ghana) present eleven papers that combine theory and econometric analysis in an effort to assess linkages between globalization, trade, and poverty (including gendered aspects). Specific topics examined include manufacturing employment and wage effects of trade liberalization; the influence of education on trade liberalization impacts on household welfare; trade liberalization and manufacturing firm productivity; the impact of elimination of trade taxes on poverty and income distribution; food prices, tax reforms, and consumer welfare under trade liberalization; impacts on tariff revenues; and impacts on cash cropping, gender, and household welfare; Distributed in the US by Stylus. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Mapping Ghana's struggle to transform its economy after independence, this original interpretation highlights the economic difficulties associated with the political legacies of colonialism.