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Economic development doesn’t have just one model in a complex world
Andrew Sheng says institutions such as the World Bank have embraced a diversity of strategies for development, grounded in the idea of life-improving outcomes
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Given massive social divisions and the disruptions from technology, what is the new development model?
As the newly formed Commission for Global Economic Transformation, co-chaired by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence, gets down to work, we should reflect on whether emerging markets are able to formulate a new development model that works.
The World Bank is the world’s premier development funding agency and its World Development Report is an opinion shaper on the subject. The bank is part of the economics establishment, since it hires what it considers the best and brightest economists from the top universities. But if the economics profession is blind to its own blindness, then the bank also suffers the same fate.
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A recent blog review of the last five reports, however, suggests that a new Washington consensus is emerging.
Gone are the idealist models of free markets. Instead, the bank has embraced complexity, context, learning by doing, politics and ideas – all major reviews of the economic profession since the global financial crisis.
Tales from Beijing and Hong Kong show challenge of fighting poverty, especially among working poor
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