Publication: Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 1995
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1995-04-30
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2019-09-16
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This year’s report derives its main theme from a fundamental change that is taking place in the world economy today – globalization. This change is being driven both by widespread adoption of market liberalization policies and by technological change that is fast eroding physical barriers to international transactions. The report also reviews the prospects for developing countries in the context of their increasing integration into world markets for goods, services, and capital, highlighting the new opportunities and challenges that arise from closer international economic integration. The process of integration also brings frictions, the report notes, which requires closer monitoring and quicker policy responses at the country, regional, and global levels.
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“World Bank. 1995. Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 1995. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32390 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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It also aimed to illustrate the situation of rural economies in terms of income, diversification, and overall transformation. The results obtained make it possible to improve the dialogue between national and international partners and to provide orientations for the agricultural and rural policy debates. Relying on a methodology that articulated micro-data collection with a macro structural perspective, the program conducted extensive fieldwork to investigate livelihood strategies of rural households, and married the results with a thorough understanding of structural change. The book highlights recurring patterns of diversification and specialization along the process of structural transformation. Further, reconnecting with a broader vision, it emphasizes the difficulties faced by late developers, whose economies offer few alternatives for households to diversify. Based on their assessment, the authors draw a series of policy lessons. They rightly point out the importance of states rebuilding their internal capacities to design comprehensive development strategies. These capacities are critical to addressing major constraints, defining priorities, and ensuring adequate sequencing. Above all, they show that for Sub-Saharan Africa, in the coming two decades, a strong reinvestment in agriculture (in addition to seizing opportunities for the development of manufacturing and services) will be the major policy tool for progressively raising income, mitigating risks, and fostering innovation and rural demand, which constitutes the main engine for rural diversification a major step for structural transformation. The authors also stress the role of the state in provisioning public goods, in adequately and carefully designing incentives, and in using the leverage offered by the development of small towns as a critical mechanism for rural change. These are all sensible and useful reminders for the donor community, governments, and local stakeholders, and represent an important contribution to the role of agriculture for development.
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Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. 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In addition to discussing global and regional economic developments and prospects, this edition of Global Economic Prospects includes a chapter on the challenges posed by informality and associated policy options. The report also contains pieces on the remarkable decline in inflation in emerging market and developing economies over the past decades, rising debt vulnerabilities in low-income countries, and the implications of large spikes in food prices for poverty. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing countries, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). The January edition includes in-depth analyses of topical policy challenges faced by these economies, while the June edition contains shorter analytical pieces.