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New Structural Economics : A Framework for Rethinking Development and Policy

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2012-01-06
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2012-03-19
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The new structural economics argues that the best way to upgrade a country's endowment structure is to develop its industries at any specific time according to the comparative advantages determined by its given endowment structure at that time. The economy will be most competitive, the economic surplus will be the largest, and the capital accumulation and the upgrading of factor endowment structure will be the fastest possible. The 'New Structural Economics' presented in this book is an attempt to set out this third wave of development thinking. Taking into account the lessons learned from the growth successes and failures of the last decades, it advances a neoclassical approach to study the determinants and dynamics of economic structure. It postulates that the economic structure of an economy is endogenous to its factor endowment structure and that sustained economic development is driven by changes in factor endowments and continuous technological innovation. The paper also discusses binding constraints to growth in each of these industries' value chains as well as mechanisms through which governance-related issues in the implementation of industrial policy could be addressed.
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Lin, Justin Yifu. 2012. New Structural Economics : A Framework for Rethinking Development and Policy. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2232 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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    As strategies for achieving sustainable growth in developing countries are re-examined in light of the financial crisis, it is critical to take into account structural change and its corollary, industrial upgrading. Economic literature has devoted a great deal of attention to the analysis of technological innovation, but not enough to these equally important issues. The new structural economics outlined in this paper suggests a framework to complement previous approaches in the search for sustainable growth strategies. It takes the following into consideration. First, an economy's structure of factor endowments evolves from one level of development to another. Therefore, the optimal industrial structure of a given economy will be different at different levels of development. Each industrial structure requires corresponding infrastructure (both “hard” and “soft”) to facilitate its operations and transactions. Second, each level of economic development is a point along the continuum from a low-income agrarian economy to a high-income industrialized economy, not a dichotomy of two economic development levels (“poor” versus “rich” or “developing” versus “industrialized”). Industrial upgrading and infrastructure improvement targets in developing countries should not necessarily draw from those that exist in high-income countries. Third, at each given level of development, the market is the basic mechanism for effective resource allocation. However, economic development as a dynamic process requires industrial upgrading and corresponding improvements in “hard” and “soft” infrastructure at each level. Such upgrading entails large externalities to firms' transaction costs and returns to capital investment. Thus, in addition to an effective market mechanism, the government should play an active role in facilitating industrial upgrading and infrastructure improvements."
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