Growth And Empowerment ─ Making Development Happen

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.

Nicholas Stern is Head of the Government Economic Service and Second Permanent Secretary to the Treasury of the United Kingdom. He served as Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank from July 2000 to October 2003, and before that held academic positions at institutions including the London School of Economics, Oxford University, and MIT.