This paper evaluates structural change, inequality dynamics, and industrial policy in South Africa between 1960 and the present day. We find that South Africa experienced growth-enhancing structural transformation until the early 1970s, before...
As COVID-19 ravages international trade and production, policy-makers are shifting their sights from global value chains (GVCs) to regional value...
For a growing number of countries in Africa the discovery of natural resources is a great opportunity, but one accompanied by considerable risks. There is an extensive literature linking natural resource dependence to poor economic performance. One...
The focus of this study is rent in the diamond industry. Based on extensive datasets and a discussion of all relevant costs, we present resource rent statistics from the diamond industry in key producer countries in emerging economies such as Angola...
This study analyses the differentials of productive values in Vietnamese micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and how market constraints have hindered their performance. Quantitative analyses suggest substantial differences in value addition...
Part of Book The Developer’s Dilemma
16 December 2014 John Page On 20 November 2014 the United Nations celebrated the 25th Africa Industrialization Day. But perhaps ‘celebrate’ is not...
23 April 2014 Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang At the onset of its miraculous rise in 1979, China had been trapped in poverty for centuries and was poorer...
The debate on industrial policy (IP) has been characterized by a number of contractions over the concept of industrial policy, its merits, contents and application. The purpose of this exploratory paper is to review the debate on IP. Outlining the...
Success in development over the past half-century was based on manufacturing-led export growth. Because the share of global employment in manufacturing will decline, manufacturing won’t play the same role in the coming decades. An increase in...
Understanding industry agglomeration and its driving forces is critical for the formulation of industrial policy in developing countries. Crucial to this process is the definition and measurement of agglomeration. We construct a new coagglomeration...
We argue that spatial inequality of industry location is a primary cause of spatial income inequality in developing nations. We focus on understanding the process of spatial industrial variation—identifying the spatial factors that have cost...
Unlike in the past where industrial policy was either focused on creation and growth of state-owned firms or alternatively consisted merely of broadly functional policies without consideration for firm or entrepreneurial specifics, the requirement...
This paper explores the implications of climate change for industrial policy (IP). Five implications are discussed, namely the need for international coordination of IPs; for putting human development, and not emission targets, as the overriding...
This study shows that China’s post-1949 state-led industrialization has closely followed an underlying path that began in the late nineteenth century. It was initiated by pressing national defence needs and has since been motivated by the same and...
In considering pathways to industrialization in the twenty-first century, cognisance needs to be taken of the fact that many countries have actually been deindustrializing. This paper analyses deindustrialization experiences internationally, by...
Industrial policy has attracted considerable controversy in the development context. This paper makes a case for a pragmatic and limited approach to interventions as a means of stimulating industrialization in the context of current and future...
This paper argues for a change in government attitudes to their extractive industries: as enclaves useful primarily as revenue sources. This is too narrow a perspective: it fails to recognize the broader economic linkages that are invariably possible...
Despite the use of industrial policies to stimulate economic growth by several successful developers, latecomers have faced mixed experiences. Hence, this paper analyses the industrial policy experience of the electronics industry in Malaysia. A...
Three major policy regimes, namely import substitution, market liberalization and export promotion have greatly influenced Kenyan industrialization since independence in 1963. Overall, import substitution strategy was successful in establishing some...
Otto Toivanen At least since the 1950s it has been recognized that innovation is central to economic growth. It has also been well understood that...
Recent research highlights the considerable potential of industrial policy to support structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. Given the importance of the state in industrial policy, this paper considers the implications for these discussions...
Ethiopia represents an excellent case study of recent industrial policy experimentation in Africa. The country is well known for its successful promotion of the cut-flower industry through business-government co-ordination. What is less known is that...
The paper looks at the evolution of industry in Uganda examining drivers and constraints since the pre-colonial period in the 1940s to date. It is argued that the state played a central role in industrialization during the pre-colonial and immediate...
Amelia U. Santos-Paulino and Guanghua Wan China and India have become global economic powers. Even at the market exchange rate, China overtook Japan...
Tony Addison 'Birds of a feather flock together', the old saying goes. So too do investors. Today, those investment birds are a depressed lot. The...
This Policy Brief focuses on links between the developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China’s spectacular growth on developing economies and the rest of the...
Senegal is a typical sub-Saharan economy, which conducted an import substitution policy over 1960-86, followed by a policy of support for the private sector and liberalization of the economy. It suffers from a low level of economic development...
African countries are facing great opportunities but also formidable challenges in accelerating economic growth and sustaining a high level of economic performance. The experiences of East Asian countries may offer valuable insights for African...
South Africa has exhibited tepid economic growth over the past twenty years as well as high levels of income inequality characteristic of a middle income country growth trap. This paper compares and contrasts South Africa’s growth trap relative to...
This paper draws on both successful and failing cases of industrialization in China to analyse the role of local governments in fostering the growth of light manufacturing. The broad spectrum of support types and the intimate knowledge of enterprise...
African countries have sought to replicate the success of East Asia by implementing special economic zones. Despite decades of international experience, there remains no blueprint for successful special economic zone policies, and the majority of...
The transfer from an import-substitution to an export-orientation strategy has been in effect in Vietnam since the reform process, Doi Moi, necessitating the reformulation of macroeconomic, trading and sectoral policies. As a result, the industry...
This paper chronicles the evolution of industry in Ghana over the post-independence era from an inward over-protected import substitution industrialization strategy of 1960-83 to an outward liberalized strategy during 1984-2000, and since 2001, to...
After the Second World War, Mozambique went through a series of transformations, from an incipient industrializing colonial society to an independent country with a central planned economy, plus a regional and internal war, and finally from 1994...
This paper examines China and Africa co-operation from the angle of structural transformation as a major driver of growth and job creation. Being a bit ahead in the structural transformation process, China can provide ideas, tacit knowledge...
Luc Christiaensen and Lionel Demery Escalating food prices in 2007-2008, climate change and land grabbing have woken the world up to the extraordinary...
Industrial policy is back. Advocates for industrial policy argue that the important question is not whether such policies should be applied at all, but how to design and implement them. For the extractive industries this development poses a challenge...
The phased elimination of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement has been one of the most compelling trade policy reforms of the early twenty-first century, and has brought in significant changes in the industrial structures of the countries of the global south...
Recent writing on industrial policy stresses the need for coordination between the public and private sectors. This paper examines the performance of one such coordination mechanism, Presidential Investors’ Advisory Councils, in Ethiopia, Senegal...
Over the past decade, Africa has been experiencing an economic resurgence. Yet, the continent is facing several difficult challenges and many economies of the region continue to be among the least competitive in the world. Africa’s competitiveness is...
Part of Book Extractive Industries
Tanzania ranks among the leading stars of the ‘African growth miracle’, but a sector that has been largely absent from the Tanzania success story is industry. Although growth of manufacturing has outpaced economic growth over the past decade...
This week I attended the 28th Africa Industrialization Day at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Even sympathetic readers may reasonably ask...
Industrial transformation of Asia arguably constitutes the most surprising and dramatic change in the global economy in the last fifty years. This paper provides an outline of some of the most important trends of this development and analyses...
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