Gustav Ranis

Economic Growth and Human Development

This paper cuts adrift the mainstream approach to the legal-origins debate on the law-growth nexus by integrating both overall economic and human components in our understanding of how regulation quality and the rule of law lie at the heart of economic and inequality adjusted human developments. Findings summarily reveal that legal-origin does not explain economic growth and human development beyond the mechanisms of law channels. As a policy implication results support benefits of the rule of law and quality of regulation as channels to economic growth and human development.

Growth and the Family Distribution of Income by Factor Components

I. Introduction, 17. — II. Growth and income distribution, 18. — III. Application to Taiwan, 24. — IV. Impact of growth on FID: qualitative and quantitative aspects, 27. — V. Concluding remarks, 36. — Appendix, 38.

V-goods and the role of the urban informal sector in development.

This paper analyzes the role of the urban informal sector in a developing country in relation to the performance of agriculture and other rural activities on the one hand and that of urban formal sector activities on the other. It decomposes the sectors into traditional and modernizing components traceable to production and consumption linkages with the rest of the economy as well as the character of government interventions over time. The paper contrasts success cases a la Taiwan in which the overall size of the urban informal sector remains modest the modernizing sub-sector grows in relative importance and the end of overall labor surplus is reached rather early with non-success cases a la the Philippines in which rapid rural-urban migration enhances the overall size of the urban informal sector the traditional sub-sector grows relatively and the end of the labor surplus condition is substantially delayed. (authors)

Rural nonagricultural activities in development: Theory and application

Abstract This paper focusses on the potentially important role of rural nonagricultural activity in the development process. Using the Hymer-Resnick Z-goods model as a point of departure, we first show that its pessimistic conclusions are based on rather restrictive assumptions as applied to the colonial period. We relax these assumptions, indicating the theoretical possibility of a substantially more positive scenario for that period. Subsequently, we analyze the role of Z-goods, traditional and nontraditional, in the post-independence era, again distinguishing between archetypal pessimistic and optimistic cases. Finally, the comparative historical experience of the Philippines and Taiwan is brought to bear to illustrate the argument empirically.

Human Development: Beyond the Human Development Index

The well‐known Human Development Index (HDI) encompasses only three rather basic aspects of human welfare. This paper aims to go beyond this, by identifying 11 categories of human development. We next propose plausible candidates as indicators of these categories. We then estimate correlations among the indicators within each category, discarding those that are highly correlated with others. This left 39 indicators to encompass the categories. Of these, eight indicators are highly correlated with the HDI and may therefore be represented by it. But 31 are not highly correlated, suggesting that a full assessment of human development requires a much broader set of indicators than the HDI alone. Following the same procedure, we find that under‐five mortality rates perform equally as well as the HDI, and income per capita is less representative of other dimensions of human development. The HDI (and the other two broad indicators) are shown to be worse indicators of the extended categories of human development for OECD countries than for developing countries.

Strategies for Success in Human Development

This paper analyzes the various policy dimensions which have contributed to successful human development (HD) performance in developing countries over the past three decades. We identify the four best HD performers in each of the regions, taking their level of life expectancy and infant mortality, as well as improvements in these dimensions over time, as the indicators.

Decentralization and Human Development in Argentina

The human development impact of decentralization is the central focus of this paper, which addresses evolving patterns of fiscal decentralization in Argentina based on health and education indicators. The authors use previously unavailable data to look at decentralization in Argentina over time, and to document the positive impact of devolutionary decentralization on health and education, and the empirical relationship between fiscal decentralization and human development. The aim is to shift the focus of the general debate on decentralization away from purely budgetary issues.

A model of growth and employment in the open dualistic economy: The cases of Korea and Taiwan

In this paper, the pressing problem of unemployment in the contemporary developing world is studied from an historical perspective of transition growth, i.e. the process representing the termination of economic colonialism and the initiation of modern growth. This problem is investigated for a particular type of LDC, namely, the open dualistic labour surplus economy. The post‐war (1950–70) experience of Taiwan and Korea were analyzed from this viewpoint—emphasizing the fine differences as well as the family resemblance among these countries. As ex‐Japanese colonies, both these countries shared a relatively strong agricultural infrastructure and the open dualistic and labour surplus characteristic at the beginning of the transition in the 1950s. However, as we show, Taiwan had an initially more favourable set of institutional and economic conditions in agriculture.

The state of development economics : progress and perspectives

Reflections on development dependence, development and interdependence structural transformation - a program of research trade, development and the state development economics - what next? problems, development theory and strategies of Latin America development and trade in historical perspective dependence, interdependence, and policies - what have we learned? what has happened to development theory? development theory, strategies, and problems of Asia development theory, strategies, and problems of Latin America development theory, strategies, and problems of Africa development theory, strategies, and problems of socialist developing economics population, human capital and development mobilization of the rural economy trade, employment and industrial development financial liberalization in retrospect labour markets and the household economy development, welfare, and equity - where do we go from here? the politics of development policy the evolution of development policy trade.factor mobility, and adjustment in a changing world economy the role of science and technology in development.

Industrial Sector Labor Absorption

The ability of lesser developed countries to efficiently absorb unemployed or underemployed manpower into their industrial sectors during the development phase is examined. The poor record of industrial labor absorption in LDCs is discussed from a historical and policy perspective. The different nature of the innovation process in LDCs is described, and a theory to account for the innovation process is proposed. This theory is examined in relation to favorable policy conditions by reference to historical Japan and contemporary Korea and Taiwan. It is concluded that a typical developing country can expect, through manipulation of appropriate policies, to change from import substitution to export substitution. This transition will involve movement from pure technological transplantation to reliance upon labor-using innovations. Such a transition will accelerate the current slow and uneven trend toward economic liberalization.