Despite significant gains in promoting economic growth and living conditions (or"human progress") globally over the last twenty-five years, much of the developing world remainsplagued by poverty and its attendant problems, including high rates of child mortality, illiteracy,environmental degradation, and war. In Growth and Empowerment, Nicholas Stern, Jean-Jacques Dethier,and F. Halsey Rogers propose a new strategy for development. Drawing on many years of work indevelopment economics -- in academia, in the field, and at international institutions such as theWorld Bank -- the authors base their strategy on two interrelated approaches: building a climatethat encourages investment and growth and at the same time empowering poor people to participate inthat growth. This plan differs from other models for development, including the dogmatic approach ofmarket fundamentalism popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Stern, Dethier, and Rogers see economicdevelopment as a dynamic process of continuous change in which entrepreneurship, innovation,flexibility, and mobility are crucial components and the idea of empowerment, as both a goal and adriver of development, is central. The book points to the unique opportunity today -- after 50 yearsof successes and failures, and with a growing body of analytical work to draw on -- to pursue newdevelopment strategies in both research and action.
The former Chief Economist at the World Bank proposes a strategy for development based on two interrelated approaches: building an investment climate that encourages growth and empowering poor people to participate in that growth.
