Publication:
Berlin Workshop Series 2009 : Spatial Disparities and Development Policy

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (3.82 MB)
943 downloads
English Text (815.92 KB)
3,981 downloads
Published
2009
ISSN
Date
2012-03-19
Editor(s)
Abstract
The Berlin workshop series 2009 presents a selection of papers from meetings held on September 30-October 2, 2007, at the tenth annual Berlin workshop, jointly organized by InWent-Capacity Building International, Germany, and the World Bank in preparation for the World Bank's World Development Report (WDR) 2009. The workshop brings diverse perspectives from outside the World Bank, providing a forum in which to exchange ideas and engage in debate relevant to development of the WDR. The report will accordingly have three parts, each describing, explaining, or drawing lessons from the spatial transformations that have been observed in both developed and developing countries. The first section of the report will be factual and present the stylized facts on economic concentration and welfare disparities, for both developing and developed countries, over the last two centuries. The second part of the report will identify the main drivers of these changes, distilling the insights provided by the advances in economic thought over the last two decades. The third section of the report will discuss the policy implications, in essence identifying the public policy priorities that help countries to realize the immediate economic benefits of greater concentration and the social and long-term economic benefits of moderate spatial disparities. In essence, the report will emphasize that neighborhoods are important for development. This is true for cities, for regions, and for countries: it is difficult for a city to prosper in the middle of a squalid countryside, it is difficult for a province to prosper rapidly when other provinces in the country are squalid, and it is difficult for a country to prosper for long when the countries around it are mired in squalor. The report will propose that the solution for cities, regions, and countries is to invest in neighborhoods. The principle is to deepen integration and not to attempt isolation.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Kochendorfer-Lucius, Gudrun; Pleskovic, Boris. 2009. Berlin Workshop Series 2009 : Spatial Disparities and Development Policy. Berlin Workshop Series 2009. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2650 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Rethinking Economic Growth in a Globalizing World
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008) Venables, Anthony J.
    This paper argues that cumulative causation processes are fundamental to understanding growth and development. Such processes derive from spatially concentrated increasing returns to scale including thick market effects, knowledge spillovers, sectoral and urban clustering, and self-reinforcing improvements in physical and social infrastructure. These sources of agglomeration have been extensively analyzed in the economic geography literature. They imply that spatial unevenness in economic activity and incomes is an equilibrium outcome. Growth tends to be 'lumpy,' with some sectors in some countries growing fast while other countries lag. The policy challenge is to lift potential new centers of economic activity to the point where they can reap the productivity and investment climate advantages of increasing returns and cumulative causation.
  • Publication
    Toward a Microeconomics of Growth
    (World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-04) Burgess, Robin; Venables, Anthony J.
    What drives growth at the microeconomic level? The authors divide the factors that determine a location's growth performance into two groups, "1st advantage" and "2nd advantage." The term 1st advantage refers to the conditions that provide the environment in which new activities can be profitably developed, including most of the factors on which traditional theory has focused, such as access to inputs (labor and capital), access to markets, provision of basic infrastructure, and the institutional environment. The term 2nd advantage refers to factors that increase returns to scale and can lead to cumulative causation processes. They may be acquired by learning, through technological spillovers, or by the development of thick markets of suppliers and local skills. The authors' analysis suggests that empirical investigation of the drivers of growth must shift down to a more microeconomic level. Such an analysis has become more feasible as data at the subnational level have become more available. By viewing recent empirical evidence on drivers of growth through their analytical framework, the authors are able to begin to sketch out a microeconomic agenda for growth. They emphasize that it is the manner in which 1st and 2nd advantages interact that shapes the pattern of development. The authors then turn to the example of how policy has affected manufacturing growth performance in India. They analyze links between the direction of state-level labor regulation and growth in the organized manufacturing sector, how state-led expansion of bank branches into rural areas has affected unregistered or informal manufacturing, and how the pre-reform technological capability of industries affected their response to liberalization in 1991. The analysis suggests that policy choices at the local level affect growth. Both theory and empirics need to downshift to the microeconomic level if we are to make advances in identifying specific means of encouraging innovation and growth.
  • Publication
    Growth Strategies for Africa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008) Collier, Paul
    Over the past four decades Africa has diverged from other developing regions and is now the poorest region in the world. This paper offers an explanation of Africa's slow growth in terms of its distinctive economic and human geography: its high dependence upon natural resource exports, the many landlocked countries, and the high ethnic diversity of the typical state. It discusses how key economic policy choices, especially trade and fiscal policy, and assistance from the international community, need to tailored specifically to these distinctive circumstances. Part one of this paper sets out an explanation for why this happened and whether it is likely to recur, using the building blocks of economic geography. Africa is distinctive both in its physical geography and its human geography and these have shaped its opportunities. Part one has three sections. Section two considers the implications of Africa's distinctive physical geography. It accounts for some of Africa's slow growth and suggests how strategies will need to differ radically among Africa's countries. In section three author turn to its distinctive human geography and the political problems that this has created. To a considerable extent these problems recently have been surmounted: Africa's human geography may explain delayed take-off rather than predict persistent stagnation. Finally, in section four, author consider three interactions between physical geography and human geography that generate intractable problems that are likely to require both regional action and international assistance in various forms. Part two uses the analysis of part one to consider policy options. Section five discusses options for African governments. Section six focuses on the supporting actions that can be taken by governments outside Africa and by international agencies. Section seven offers a brief conclusion.
  • Publication
    How Might Climate Change Affect Economic Growth in Developing Countries? A Review of the Growth Literature with a Climate Lens
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08) Lecocq, Franck; Shalizi, Zmarak
    This paper reviews the empirical and theoretical literature on economic growth to examine how the four components of the climate change bill, namely mitigation, proactive (ex ante) adaptation, reactive (ex post) adaptation, and ultimate damages of climate change affect growth, especially in developing countries. The authors consider successively the Cass-Koopmans growth model and three major strands of the subsequent literature on growth: with multiple sectors, with rigidities, and with increasing returns. The paper finds that although the growth literature rarely addresses climate change per se, some issues discussed in the growth literature are directly relevant for climate change analysis. Notably, destruction of production factors, or decrease in factor productivity may strongly affect long-run equilibrium growth even in one-sector neoclassical growth models; climatic shocks have had large impacts on growth in developing countries because of rigidities; and the introducing increasing returns has a major impact on growth dynamics, in particular through induced technical change, poverty traps, or lock-ins. Among the most important gaps identified in the literature are lack of understanding of the channels by which shocks affect economic growth, lack of understanding of lock-ins, heavy reliance of numerical models assessing climate policies on neoclassical-type growth frameworks, and frequent use of an inappropriate "without climate change" counterfactual.
  • Publication
    Lessons from European Union Policies for Regional Development
    (2009-06-01) Shankar, Raja; Shah, Anwar
    Regional disparities present an ever present development challenge in most countries, especially those with large geographic areas under their jurisdiction. A neglect of these inequities may create the potential for disunity and, in extreme cases, for disintegration. In view of this, most countries actively pursue policies with a view to helping lagging regions catch up with faster growing regions. These policies have at best a mixed record of success. It is therefore useful to discern what type of policies work and why? In this context learning from the experience of the European Union (EU) may be particularly instructive as, over the years, it has provided significant support to assist poorer regions achieve convergence with the richer regions. This paper reviews the impact of EU policies for regional development to draw lessons of interest to other countries pursuing similar goals. The paper concludes that policies that serve to create an internal common market by creating a level playing field that enables poorer regions to integrate with the broader national and global economies have the best potential to advance regional income convergence. In this context, removal of barriers to trade and factor mobility and providing enhanced access to information and technology to the lagging regions should be main policy priorities for regional development.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

No results found.