Suchergebnisse

Most of the world's people live in "developing" economies, as do most of the world's poor. The predominant means of economic development is economic growth. In this book Gary Fields asks to what extent and in what circumstances economic growth improves the material standard of living of a country's people. Most development economists agree that economic growth raises the incomes of people in all parts of the income distribution and lowers the poverty rate. At the same time, some groups lose out because of changes accompanying economic growth. Fields examines these beliefs, asking what variables should be measured to determine whether progress is being made and what policies and circumstances cause some countries to do better than others. He also shows how the same data can be interpreted to reach different, even conflicting, conclusions. Using both theoretical and empirical approaches, Fields defines and examines inequality, poverty, income mobility, and economic well-being. Finally, he considers various policies for broad-based growth. Copublished with the Russell Sage Foundation.

More than three billion people in the world live on less than two-and-a-half U.S. dollars per person per day. In this book Gary Fields explains how the poor work, how they have improved their self-employment earning opportunities, how poor-country governments can stimulate more inclusive economic growth, and how they can be aided.

Economists have traditionally concentrated on aggregate economic growth to measure a country's development, but previously they have also considered income distribution performance. In this book Gary Fields reverses conventional approaches by using income distribution as the primary indicator. He examines what is known about the distribution of income and poverty, inequality, and development. He explores the main causes of poverty and inequality and the extent to which they have been reduced by individual countries in the course of their economic growth. Recognizing that conclusions vary with the type of income distribution measure used, Fields proposes that changes in absolute poverty be adopted as the primary index of a developing nation's progress and suggests that the growth rate of the GNP and character of that growth be regarded as the principal determinants of the levels of poverty and inequality. This framework calls for new models new data. and new microanalytic techniques in order to understand the results of development efforts. Fields employs evidence from case studies of six developing nations to suggest some explanations for differing patterns of development and calls for development planning founded on a firm commitment to helping the poor

Pro-poor growth refers to how incomes change for the poor and for otherswhen economic growth occurs. Dualistic development refers to three typesof economic growth patterns in a two-sector economy: 1) modern sectorenrichment, 2) traditional sector enrichment, and 3) modern sectorenlargement. The question asked in this article is, what can we say aboutthe pro-poorness of each of the three types of dualistic development? Themain conclusion I reach is that pro-poor growth works well for the first twodualistic growth types but runs into some difficulties for the third. Toovercome these problems, I posit some axioms for dualistic development –particularly, by treating pro-richness and pro-poorness as distinct orderings.

Los mercados de trabajo son importantes porque la mayoría de la gente, sobre todo los pobres, obtienen todo su ingreso, o la mayor parte de él, del trabajo que realizan. Este ensayo estudia los mercados de trabajo por medio de los modelos sectoriales. La primera sección sustantiva presenta la esencia de la modelación multisectorial, en particular el papel del dualismo del mercado de trabajo. Dado que los mercados de trabajo se componen a menudo de segmentos muy distintos, un enfoque analítico útil y perspicaz consiste en empezar con sólo dos segmentos interrelacionados, el formal y el informal. En consecuencia, las secciones presentan modelos de salarios y empleo en la economía formal, la economía informal y las relaciones intersectoriales, respectivamente. La última sección sustantiva muestra las contribuciones de estos modelos al entendimiento y el análisis de la política en los mercados de trabajo. No debería esperarse que el mismo modelo se aplique a África Oriental y Asia Oriental, o a Sudáfrica y Corea del Sur. Sin duda, el modelo "correcto" es específico del contexto. La combinación de la observación empírica y la modelación analítica ha generado grandes avances. Las políticas sólidas para el mercado laboral requieren modelos sólidos del mercado de trabajo.

Of the world's 6.7 billion people (as of 2008), 1.3 billion lived on less than $1.25 Purchasing Power Parity dollars per person per day and another 1.7 billion lived on between $1.25 and $2.50 PPP dollars (Chen and Ravallion, 2012). The scourge of absolute economic misery among billions of the world's people is one of the most serious problems facing humankind today. Unemployment (defined below) befalls about 200 million of the world's people - a sizeable number but small compared to the three billion people who are poor using the $2.50 PPP dollar poverty line. A much larger number - 900 million - are employed but earning so little that they and their families are unable to reach even $2 per person per day (ILO, 2012). They are working hard and they are working poor. (Working Hard, Working Poor is the title of my latest book (Fields, 2012). To achieve more and better employment (where "better" depends on such factors as rate of pay, job security, employment protections, and type of work), analysts and donors need to understand better how employment, growth, poverty and other factors interact, how unemployment is caused, and how employment can be improved. At the same time, drawing on practical experience, research can identify knowledge gaps that to date pose limits to successful employment creation policy.