By Rok Spruk, on February 17th, 2011
The idea of charter cities, originally promoted by Stanford economist Paul Romer, sparked a lively academic debate in the field of economic development. The idea of charter city rests on the premise of creating special reform zones within countries. The reform zone would not be governed by the prevailing system of formal and informal rules within countries. The concept of charter city would serve as an intellectual laboratory of ideas in which governments would be let to quickly adopt innovative system of rules. The purpose of charter cities is the empowerment of incentives in world’s less developed countries to develop human capital skills, hence, to increase the level of productivity and real wages that could foster the increase in the standard of living. By and large, the core idea of building a charter city means building a city of about 1000 sq. kilometers in the unoccupied land of the host country and adopting an innovative system of formal and informal rules provided by the source country. The example of charter city include selling Guantanamo to Canada and turning the little piece of Cuban land into Caribbean Hong Kong by adopting a formal system of rules and governance based on limited government, strong rule of law and free market; and turning the new territory into manufacturing hub that could serve as a source of income for workers across Caribbean islands such as Haiti. The charter city would not only provide the opportunity for testing intellectual ideas and innovations but also migrational opportunities for individuals from world’s most impoverished countries such as Haiti. The coordination of the charter city is managed by a triangle. First, the host country would provide the piece of land. Second, the source country would provide the infrastructure, human capital and ideas. And third, the guarantor country would provide the assurance that the charter would be respected by both countries.
The concept of the charter city has gained significant attention by development experts in discussing developmental malaise in world’s least developed countries in Africa. The empirical evidence on Africa’s underdevelopment is striking. It suggests a blinking interplay of corruption, institutional fragility and state failure. According to African Development Indicators, about 75 percent of firms in Cote d’Ivoire identify corruption as the major constraint in doing business. In Ethiopia, less than 2 percent of females enroll tertiary education. Moreover, the average Ethiopian female can expect only 7 years of total schooling. In Liberia, about 11 percent of married women partake a contraceptive use by any method. Hence, one third of young Liberian women, aged 15-19. In addition, 60 percent of Liberians live below $2 per day. In Mozambique and Sierra Leone, only 45 percent of young women are literate. A female at birth in Sub-Saharan Africa can expect to experience no more than 8 years of total schooling throughout her life.
The perennial question in the establishment of charter cities is whether the idea can serve as a source of good rules, promoting good governance through low-cost contract enforcement. Institutional fragility of states across world’s least developed countries is largely the economic outcome stemming from wrong development diagnostics, mismatched policy choices and a rigid structure of formal and informal institutional arrangements which resulted in a myriad of bad rules and corrupt political leadership across the specturm of world’s poorest countries. The general conclusion from the lessons of development policy is that in the last century, development policy failed to facilitate meaningful prescriptions for a permanent rise of GDP per capita. In particular, the misdiagnosis of essential development dilemma is not a consequence of technical failure in delivering concrete solutions to applied issues of economic development but a consequence of mismatched theoretical foundations which supplied wrong assumptions. Theoretical models of economic growth and development in late 1950s and early 1960s rested on the assumption on output per worker as an increasing and diminishing function of the capital per worker. Although the validity of the neoclassical growth theory remains undisputed, development policy and international aid donors failed to recognize that increasing the amount of aid does not lead to better development outcomes. In fact, the majority of Sub-Saharan countries experienced the relative decline of GDP per capita in the 20th century. In 1913, the GDP per capita of Ghana (in 1990 international dollars) represented 42 percent of the average GDP per capita of European periphery. In 2008, Ghana’s GDP per capita represented merely 8 percent of the average GDP per capita of European periphery. By the available statistics, Algeria was the second wealthiest country in Africa, only after South Africa. In 1913, Ghana was the fourth richest society in Africa, only after South Africa, Algeria and Egypt. In 2008, Ghana’s GDP per capita was ranked 20th in Africa, in the same range as Angola, Lesotho and Nigeria.
The question surrounding the emergence of the charter city is whether it can serve as a treatment to the contagious sclerosis of fragile institutional structure in failed states, marred by poor governance and the lack of law and order, causing the failure to enforce private contracts as to ensure the rule of law and provide the institutional impetus for sound governance and better formal and informal rules. A notable criticism of the institutional fragility in world’s less developed countries pertains to the capture of the state by the political elites. The political elites in world’s poorest regions have provided sufficient conditions for the capture of government and judicial system by incorporating a system of powerful informal arrangements through bloated corruption which consequently impaired investment and ultimately resulted in the expropriation of private property rights. The institutional chaos in the most failed states of the world culminated into behavioral adaption to bad rules. The sequence of harmful economic policies eventually seized upon poor development outcomes such as high rates of poverty, stagnating income per capita, low life expectancy and poor health and education indicators.
The foremost task of the charter city should facilitate the institutional decency to enforce private contracts without transaction cost barriers and ensure a robust system of the rule of law since better rules nonetheless depend on how informal institutions such as culture, habits and behavior embrace the virtues of free markets, limited government and the rule of law. Aside from the essential infrastructural arrangements, the provision of institutional conditions for living under a different set of rules does not necessarily imply sufficient prerequisites for the productivity growth that could, in the long run, transform the charter city from low-wage pool of unskilled labor into high-wage urban agglomeration. What is needed for a charter city to flourish is the acceptance of informal institutions of the liberal society such as the freedom of contract and the freedom from corruption. One should not hesitate that economic and personal liberties in world’s poorest countries are plagued by predatory rent-seeking political behavior as well as contended against the principles of adherence to formal rules. Without a sensory adherence to these principles, it would be impossible to envisage the charter city as a solution to world poverty and underdevelopment.
For a charter city to provide a clear and cohesive framework of rules, it is essential to provide the credibility and predictability of rules. In early 1950s, Hong Kong was a small island chartered by the British who established a system of credibility over centuries. Hong Kong was the only place where Chinese workers were allowed to migrate from the mainland China. The credibility of the rules, emphasizing limited government over extensive government intervention, free markets over regulated command-and-control economy and the rule of law over political discretion and interest-group politics, proved vital in Hong Kong’s steady economic growth in the 20th century. In 1950, Hong Kong’s income per capita was around GBP 2,500. By 1997, the average income per capita rose to GBP 20,000.
The idea of building charter cities to boost income per capita by innovative framework of governance is a valuable alternative to the mainstream development policy. First, setting a charter city in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America would encourage seasonal and permanent migration flows from areas with low population density both on domestic and international scale. David McKenzie and John Gibson examined the impact of New Zealand’s Recognized Seasonal Employer program (link), aimed at encouraging seasonal migration from Pacific islands Tonga and Vanuatu to New Zealand, benefitting employers at home. The empirical evidence and policy conclusions suggest that seasonal migration is offering a triple win since a migrant, the sending country and the receiving country benefit from participating in seasonal migration program:
“Nevertheless, there are several caveats to these conclusions. The first is that development is a long-term process, and some of the effects of the RSE may only materialize over many years of community involvement. These could include positive effects such as greater asset-building, investments and skill development if workers return for many seasons, as well as potential longer-term negative effects of continual absence of family members on family and community relations. Secondly, while the gains to households from this seasonal migration are large, they still pale in comparison to the gains from permanent international migration (McKenzie et al, 2010). A key policy issue is therefore the extent to which seasonal migration can or cannot eventually open up avenues for permanent migration. Finally, as with all evaluations, there is the question of how far the policy details and findings can be extrapolated to other settings and that it was developed drawing on lessons from experiences around the world should provide some external validity. As temporary migration programs are increasingly emphasized in policy discussions, there is likely to be plenty of scope for governments and researchers to work together in the future in assessing how well these lessons translate.”
Second, charter cities would nevertheless spur the diffusion of knowledge into the countries of poor regions in the world. In its most distinctive form, charter cities would be similar to the role of small states in the global economy. For instance, consider Mauritius. Back in 1968, when the island gained the political independence from the United Kingdom, the economic prospects of the country were undermined by rapid population growth, rachitic productivity and overdependence on sugar as the only export industry. In addition, trade policy imposed high tariffs and import quotas to protect sugar manufacturers. Since it was impossible to dismantle the barriers to trade, the government of Mauritius responded by creating a virtual special export zone. Any foreign and domestic company could enter and exit the export zone by retaining the profits earned. Companies within the export zone operated under different rules with no trade restrictions such as tariffs, import quotas, voluntary export restraints etc. Hence, the only entry requirement for locating in the special zone was that companies manufacture only for exports as not to compete with domestic markets. The special export zone proved to be a success story. Productivity and employment rates increased sharply, boosting income per capita and standard of living. In 2010, Mauritius’s GDP per capita ($15,500) is the second highest in the region, only behind Gabon ($14,600). The experience of Mauritius with the special export zone and its consequent impact on the economic prosperity of the island, suggests that institutional competition ultimately rewards the institutional structure with better economic outcomes. The entire concept of the charter city is based on encouraging the institutional competition between charter cities and politico-economic systems in poorer countries where charter cities would be most likely to settle. Low initial level of income per capita in charter cities would encourage low-wage employment with unskilled labor. The experience of countries such as Mauritius, Singapore and Hong Kong suggests that favorable institutional features at the beginning stage of development result in better economic policies, ultimately leading to stable economic growth, higher standard of living and better education and health indicators. In Mauritius, the judicial independence from political influence has been enhanced by delegating the highest court of appeal to the British Privy Council, a royal judicial committee (link), full powers of judicial authority.
Many smaller countries in the 20th century, known for good development outcomes, have adopted roughly similar institutional impetus for economic growth and development. In Africa, countries with the highest level of economic freedom and the lowest perception of corruption, such as Mauritius, Botswana and Namibia, enjoy the highest level of GDP per capita in the African continent. In spite of the abundance of natural resources, Botswana adopted market-friendly economic policies in the second half of the 20th century, conducive to private enterprise and investment. According to World Bank, it takes 152 hours to pay taxes in Botswana compared to Sub-Saharan average of 315 days. In addition, a claimant in Botswana can expect to recover 63.7 cents per $1 from an insolvent firm compared to 8.4 cents per 1$ in Angola, 16 cents per 1$ in Niger and 0 cents per 1$ in Madagascar.
And third, charter cities would vastly improve the infrastructure of the residents, choosing freely to enter and exit the city. Households in countries such as Guinea still lack the access to electricity, forcing students to do the homework under streetlights and use the car park lights to review school notes (link). Despite being one of the largest receivers of aid per capita, Guinea still suffers from the lack of widespread access to electricity. One could hardly believe that the efforts pledged by international aid donors to reduce poverty and improve the standard of living across the African continent, were not sufficient. What created the black hole, such as the above in Guinea, is the institutional structure plagued by persistent corruption, political cronyism and bad governance, creating bad rules and wrong incentives. Charter cities would ingeniously cure the widespread persistence of misrule and political misconduct since the system of rules would be defined by the founding charter of the city. Good prospects of charter cities would require free entry and exit from the city as well as transparent and honest oversight of the respect for rules by independent judicial authority, managed by a guarantor country such as the United Kingdom, U.S. or Canada. In the proposed form, a typical charter city would become a manufacturing hub. In particular, it would enable access to low labor costs and significant economies of scale to technology entrepreneurs from rich countries as well as transparent contract enforcement, law and order and the security of private property rights. On the other hand, cities would enable millions of people from poor countries to migrate to chartered cities and seek employment opportunities in an environment, safe from corruption, political restraint, violence and bad governance. Hence, charter cities would provide a necessary input to the intellectual competition of ideas in economics, law and political philosophy and elsewhere to be implemented in chartered cities.
The concept enables social scientists and development experts a real-world experiment of ideas. Hence, charter cities could provide a safe haven for prosecuted individuals in poor countries, suffering from judicial errors, physical and military violence or illicit property expropriation. The UN estimates that, over the next few decades, 3 billion people will move to cities. The inflow exerts a growing pressure on urban agglomerations. The lack of basic infrastructure and the continuity of predatory misrule could cause a rapid growth of slums in larger cities which, by and large, are the main source of infectious diseases, HIV prevalence and youth crime since the absence of access to clean water, electricity and education are the major impediment to the improvement of development outcomes in poor countries. A charter city could flourish to become an impulsive alternative to the current state of overdependence on foreign aid. However, it should be unambiguously clear that adherence to good rules and governance requires a bold and decisive change in the set of informal behavior; in which corruption, crime and nepotism are doomed to the fullest possible extent by the full enforcement of private contracts and the rule of law.
By Rok Spruk, on February 4th, 2011
The aim of main research agenda of development economics in the last century was to provide an evolving approach to curing the persistence of poverty and underdevelopment in world’s least developed and developing countries. High economic growth in developing countries in the last decades has changed many developing nations into middle-income countries. For instance, real economic growth rate in China and India from 1960 onwards averaged 6.67 percent and 3.49 percent, respectively. In 2010, China and India were already classified as lower middle-income countries, belonging to the same income group as El Salvador, Armenia and Philippines. In the recent year, China’s GDP per capita was higher than GDP per capita of many high-growing developing nations such as Ukraine, Nambia, Armenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and roughly at the same level as Algeria. Over the last decade, the economic growth in developing countries accelerated, driven by an increase in global commodity prices, robust investment rates, expansionary monetary policy and a growing domestic consumption. The economic growth in a majority of African states stagnated, consequently leading to a decrease in the overall standard of living. Between 1960 and 2009, average real GDP growth was negative in countries such as Congo, Democratic Republic (-2.26 percent), Liberia (-1.51 percent), Niger (-1.02 percent), Zambia (-0.52 percent) and Zimbabwe (-0.02 percent) with many other African countries with little or no growth in the second half of the 20th century. The stagnation of income per capita in countries such as Sierra Leone is largely the result of civil war and severe political instability, creating domestic violence and the persistence of poverty, malnutrition and AIDS/HIV prevalence. From the second half of the 20th century onwards, international aid donors have contributed significant amounts of foreign developmental assistance in various forms such as medical care and vaccination against polio, AIDS/HIV, measles and malaria, direct cash transfers and physical infrastructure. Despite significant official and unofficial developmental assitance from international aid donors, dispersion of real income per capita, measuring the level of cross-country convergence or divergence of income per capita, the gap in economic development widened in the course of the last century. In 2010, the percentage of countries with the level of real GDP per capita $1,500 or below equaled almost 20 percent (link).
The rise of development economics in the 20th century was a natural response to growing disparities in income per capita between rich and poor countries. In the framework of neoclassical theory, development economics emerged from a neoclassical growth theory, pioneered by the famous Solow-Swan model. In the simplest possible form, the growth of output per capita depends on the capital per worker and the initial level of output under stable rate of national saving and capital depreciation. Assuming diminishing returns to scale and constant rate of population growth, the increase in capital per worker would increase the output per worker that would, hence, approach its steady-state equilibrium. Theoretical notions of the Solow-Swan model were tested against the empirical data on economic growth. The key assumption of the neoclassical growth model is that poor countries would tend to catch-up rich countries, assuming higher output growth in poor countries. The convergence of income per capita would imply a neg relationship between the initial level of output per capita and output growth over time. Thus, countries with lower levels of output per capita in the initial period would experience faster rates of output growth. Consequently, the output per capita and the standard of living would approach to the level in rich countries. The empirical tests of the Solow-Swan model failed to confirm the theoretical hypothesis since economic growth rates in 20th century in developed countries were higher compared to developing countries. The divergence of income per capita led to the subsequent modifications of the Solow-Swan model. In fact, the main criticism of the model points out that the model itself failed to capture the role of technological progress in determining the level of output per worker. The mysterious growth episode in Japan and other East Asian nations posed a difficult question. How can a country with low initial level of output per worker at the end of the WW2, exceed the productivity level in rich countries? The obvious answer is that Solow-Swan growth model failed to capture the role of technology shocks which violate the assumption of diminishing capital returns, what could explain why initially poor countries subsequently converged to the level of productivity in rich countries and then exceeded the level. The phenomenon, known as growth residual, has subsequently reduced the predictive power of the Solow-Swan model since a considerable share of economic growth was not ascribed to capital and labor inputs but rather to the persistent role of technological change.
Policy implications from Solow-Swan model imply that the essential requirement to boost economic growth in a country with low initial level of output per capita is to increase the amount of capital per worker, namely by boosting public and private investment in infrastructure. From 1950s onwards, World Bank had repeatedly boosted the growth of infrastructure by facilitating developmental assistance into world’s least developed countries. According to the neoclassical growth theory, higher capital-labor ratio would provide additional investment stimulus, thereby increasing the employment-to-population ratio. Proponents of the foreign aid provided the rationale for higher foreign aid spending by the analogy of post-WW2 Europe when Marshall Plan provided $13 billion, or roughly $100 billion in today’s prices, to Western European economies to recover the physical infrastructure which had been destroyed during WW2. Marshall Plan intervention was rather short, quick and finite. The efficacy of foreign aid in Africa is questionable since little or no growth occured in many African states such as Burundi, Benin, Zimbabwe and Congo. Official forecasts from the United Nations from 1950s onwards, based on the famous Harrod-Domar growth model (link), often assumed a rapid increase in the level of GDP per capita in response to the increase in investment rates. The forecasts, based on the theoretical assumption of diminishing capital returns, predicted a persistent convergence of GDP per capita to the level sustained in richer countries. The fact that the launch of extensive investment in infrastructure resulted in further economic stagnation of many African states, has questioned both the validity and quality of prescriptions laid by the mainstream development economics.
The philosophy of the mainstream development economics was sharply criticized in the light of the fact that foreign aid failed to alleviate poverty and made the growth of African economies slower. The efforts by the World Bank have been diverted from correct diagnosis of the developmental issues in African states to repeated initiatives such as the commitment of the international community to increase the share of foreign aid to least-developed countries to at least 1 percent of the GDP. The criticism of the mainstream development economics was already formulated in 1958 when Mont Pelerin Society organized the 9th meeting and development economics seminar where professor Herbert Frankel of the Nuttfield College put forth the criticism of foreign aid and the failure of development economics:
“The lesson that flows from it is that it does pay to go to these remote areas and find out what the problem is, instead of assuming that one knows the problem before one begins. Until recent years, people have simply assumed in many of these territories in Africa, that there were no real, positive signs of enterprise among the indigenous population, which was supposed to be so uninstructed or inert that it was not able to fend for itself, experiment for itself, or improve itself. It was not realised that a reason why there was this apparent lack of initiative in the population was that there were serious customary or legal obstacles to the exercise of ordinary enterprise, even on a small scale.“
Given the lack of the comprehensive diagnosis of the causes of underdevelopment in African countries, the mainstream development economics failed to capture the appropriate assumptions in the theoretical models of economic development, upon which developmental assistance was justified. A more reasonable theoretical solution to the economic stagnation and social conflict in Africa has been put forth by the human capital theory. In its broadest and most general form, the theory stated that the economic stagnation of African countries is a consequence of the lack of skills and investment in education that could provide the necessary input to increase the economic growth and, subsequently, alleviate the issues of AIDS/HIV, malaria, child malnutrition and domestic violence. There is no doubt that the growth of education initiatives in Africa has sent many children to school. In addition, many universities in Western Europe and the United States have expanded the initiative and offered students from African states preferential admission criteria in various forms such as graduate fellowships, student grants and lower required standardized test scores, to boost admission rates of African nationals at U.S. universities. The efforts of developed countries to bring educational initiatives to Africa encouraged school participation as well as international opportunities of African citizens to study abroad, even at world’s most prestigious and highly-ranked universities. Notwithstanding the importance of education in creating the stock of human capital for the wealth of nations, educational initiatives should address the essential obstacles that creates the failure of African expatriates to return to home countries, hence, bring skills, knowledge and various other forms of human capital, which are essential to the process of long-run growth, the issues of labor market distortions in African countries. These distortions crucially impede the ability of young African graduates to matching jobs in regional labor market.
What the mainstream development economics failed to take into account is the institutional paralysis which prevails in a majority of African countries, plagued by the destructive tribal institutions based on widespread corruption, bribes and domestic violence as means of achieving political power. The prevalence of hybrid institutions, marred by the complete absence of the rule of law and judicial institutions that could facilitate efficient contract enforcement and the protection of private property rights, is not only a severe obstacle to higher economic growth but also the apparent mechanism that captures the set of explanatory features that could possibly account for what caused the misdiagnosis of the African development dilemma. Back in 2002, African Union estimated that each year, corruption costs African economies more than $148 billion or 25 percent of Africa’s GDP. The significance of corruption in state structures in Africa manifests itself in poor quality and provision of public services, the absence of judicial independence from political regimes, cumbersome contract enforcement and unprotected private property rights. Such distortions impede the level of trust and provide evolving incentives to subvert the institutional independence into political cronyism, in which corruption substitutes the tax system through bribes and extortion as methods of lowering transaction costs in overcoming the malfunctioning of the judicial system. In 1978, Erwin Blumenthal of the central bank of the Federal Republic of Germany, warned the international community that “Zaire’s political system is so corrupt that there’s no prospect for Zaire’s creditors to get their money back.” (link)
The advancement of country’s economic prospects requires not only transparent, sound and efficient regulations but, more importantly, highly efficient civil service. In 2010, Transparency International published Corruption Perception Index (link) by measuring the persistence of corruption in public sectors across the world. The findings showed that the vast majority of poor African countries were plagued by extensive and extortionate corruption and ranked in the bottom 20 percent of the distribution. Comparing the level bureaucracy against GDP per capita reveals the amplified evidence of the negative correlation between the efficiency of civil service and the GDP per capita. The ease of doing business in Africa in countries such as Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius and South Africa is remarkably easier with predictable, stable and efficient regulation, compared to countries such as Burundi, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire etc. where highly burdensome administrative procedures in doing business hamper capital formation and restrain productive investment in health-care, education and private-sector infrastructure that could provide the impetus to economic growth.
The relationship between the amount of foreign aid, received by the least-developed countries, and the scope of corruption as a rough approximation of the institutional quality in the least-developed states, could provide the answer to the question whether international donors consider the scope and significance of corruption in allocating the amount of foreign aid. The experience from the last century of development policy, suggest that international donors actually allocated more foreign aid to the countries, suffering from severe state failure, widespread corruption, government failure and the complete absence of judicial independence that could provide a system of checks and balances and the necessary restraint on the violiation of private property rights, extortion and violence by the political elites. In 1999, Alberto Alesina and Beatrice Weder (see “Do Corrupt Governments Receive Less Foreign Aid,” American Economic Review, 92(4), pp. 1126-1137) found that, contrary to arguments of aid supporters, foreign aid is not used to reward good governments since more corrupt governments received more foreign aid and official development assistance from international donors. The most striking evidence, presented by Alesina and Weder, suggests that U.S donors seem to neglect the persistence of corruption in allocating foreign aid to poor countries while, on the other hand, Scandinavian donors deem the persistence of corruption as highly important, hence, rewarding governments with lower extent of corruption.
In the following graph, I estimated the impact of corruption on official development assistance in the sample of 41 least-developed countries in 2008. In the model, I set the official development assistance to be determined by the scope of corruption in least-developed countries. The official development assistance is expressed as a share of representative country’s gross national income (GNI) for it provides a better measure of aid dependence than foreign aid per capita since the size of population is controlled by the main assumptions of the model. The data on official development assistance were download from World Bank’s World Development Indicators (link). The data on the extent of corruption in least-developed countries were provided by Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perception Index (link). The extent of corruption varies from 1 to 10, where lower values indicate more persistent corruption. I estimated whether countries with more corrupt governments receive a higher share of foreign aid from international donors. On the basis of 41 least-developed countries, sample estimates suggest that a 1 point improvement in corruption perception index tends to decrease, on average, the share of foreign aid in gross national income, on average, by 2.37 percentage points. Sample estimate of the slope coefficient is statistically significant at 5 percent level. Even though, the variation in corruption perception index accounts for 5.51 percent of the variation in official development assistance, the influence of the extent of corruption on the share of foreign aid in gross national income is not spurious but systematic and persistent.
Corruption and official development assistance
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2010. Transparency International, Corruption Perception Index, 2008.
The estimate suggests that international donors indeed reward more corrupt governments by increasing the share of official development assistance. In 2002, African Union estimated that corruption was costing the African continent $150 billion per year. The estimates of the total cost of corruption provide an ample evidence that, over the last century, international donors consistently allocated foreign aid to more corrupt governments, creating aid-dependent economies, prone to bloated bureaucracies and extractive institutions which subsequently led to the stagnation of income per capita in the last decades. An ample criticism of foreign aid initiative was put forth by Dambisa Moyo (link) in the WSJ two years ago: “The most obvious criticism of aid is its links to rampant corruption. Aid flows destined to help the average African end up supporting bloated bureaucracies in the form of the poor-country governments and donor-funded non-governmental organizations.”
The consequence of rootedness of corruption and extractive political institutions in African tribal cultures can be, in a considerable part, drawn upon the colonial heritage that spread throughout the African continent from 19th century onwards. The colonial experience across the African continent (link) served not only as a conquest of newly discovered areas but, moreover, also as an experiment of developing political and economic institutions on the basis of European influence. The colonial heritage in Africa was mainly derived from the European occupation of African lands. Hereto, the presence of European colonizers in Africa provided a long-lasting foundation of the institutional lessons from which the African states went forth.
Given the heterogenity of the European perspectives on institutional development, the colonial period in Africa left a long-lasting impact on the economic and political development in Africa. Africa’s richest countries, namely Botswana, South Africa and Mauritius, were influenced tremendously by the colonial heritage. In Botswana and South Africa, the colonial influence of English and Dutch on further economic development was mainly derived from setting strong institutional foundations of economic development such as the rule of law, judicial independence and limited government compared to other African states. Apart from the setting of formal institutions, fostering contract enforcement and the integrity of the political institutions, English and Dutch colonizers provided the establishment of cultural setting not prone to fraud, extortion and extractive institutions. Favorable institutional conditions furthered the advertance of trust and institutional efficiency, which are deemed essential in fostering the development of financial markets. Even the German presence in Namibia from 1884 to 1915 during Deutsch-Südwestafrika (link) fostered, to a certain extent, independent judiciary, relatively sound institutions and cohesive framework of the rule of law. As a result, Nambia retained the status of one of the least corrupt countries in Africa, known for relatively high degree of economic freedom in a regional comparison with other African states.
While the influence of German, English and Dutch colonizers was largely beneficial to African countries from the perspective of economic growth and development over the last century, the presence of French, Italian and Belgian colonizers arises serious concerns over the prospects of economic development across the African continent. The myraid of violence, in countries such as Congo Dem. Rep. and Somalia, which ultimately led to civil wars and the settlement of extractive institutions, largely reflects the innate ability of the colonial policies to provide the necessary conditions for the institutional integrity, the rule of law and stringent property rights that could underline the basis of economic development by restraining the power and domination of political elites and their ability to expropriate private property rights in pursuit of extractive monopoly rents from natural resources. That easily explains why countries such as Congo, Zambia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, in spite of vast reserves of natural resources, were seized by the state capture of political elites. The colonial presence largely determined the size and scope of aid dependency in African states. The most plausible and persuasive explanation of the impact of European colonial policies in African countries was presented by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and David Robinson (see “Disease and Development” Journal of European Economic Association, 1(2/3), pp. 397-405):
“European colonists were much more likely to develop institutions of private property, encouraging economic and social development, in places where they settled. In contrast, in places where they did not settle, they were more likely to opt for extractive institutions, designed to extract resources without investing in institutional development. In these places, institutions were highly centralized, with political power concentrated in the hands of small elites and with almost no checks on this elite. The property rights and more general rights of the majority of the population were not protected.“
The political and economic circumstances of the European institutional legacy in African states imparted aid dependency on those countries where the combination of tribal institutions, hostile to free enterprise and judicial restraint of political dictatorships, and unequivocally detrimental colonial policies dominated the development of political and economic institutions, setting the rules of the game. Therefore, the inability of many African societies to establish sensible and effective institutions resulted in the political capture of the state by the elites. The monopoly power of the political elites, enforcing anti-growth public policies, led to consistently poor economic outcomes, plagued by high rates of poverty and infectious diseases such as polio, malaria and measles.
The challenge of development economics is not to design aid schemes, which inevitably lead to aid dependency, marred by persistent corruption and political fraud, but to ascertain correct diagnosis of why foreign aid repeatedly resulted in the poor economic outcomes and the consequent stagnation of income per capita in many African states in 20th century. The failure of African societies to establish a rigorous system of incentives, which could significantly improve economic outcomes, is not a response to market failures (which deemed highly of early development economics) but a result of severe government failure to establish effective institutions of the rule of law, contract enforcement and stringent property rights. These institutions are the broadest foundations of economic development and the only viable alternative to political nepotism and the power of elites which, as poor development outcomes in Africa show, ultimately impose extractive institutions, causing the persistence of poverty and underdevelopment.
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By Rok Spruk, on July 16th, 2010
Financial Times reports (link) on the new measure of poverty proposed by economists from Oxford University. The authors suggested the modification of current measure of poverty which, defined by the World Bank in annually published World Development Report, is currently set at the threshold of $1.25 per day or less. The new measure proposed by economic researchers from Oxford University sets the definition of poverty in a more sophisticated framework based on the household availability of access to clean water, education, health care and other durable and non-durable goods. The new method, called Alkire-Foster approach, incorporates the qualitative elements into the measurement of poverty.
Using the new method, the authors examined poverty rates in four Indian provinces and evaluated the approach in comparison to the existing income method which had been used in economic and policy analysis by the World Bank and other institutions of economic development. The authors found a significant divergence of poverty rates when measured in both methods. For instance, under Alkire-Foster approach, the poverty rate in Indian state Jharkhand is 50 percent higher compared to the rate of poverty measured under the income method. On the other hand, the authors of the new poverty measure have shown that in some Indian provinces such as Uttaranchal (link), the official measure of poverty highly over-estimates the effective poverty measure as defined by Oxford’s Poverty and Human Development Initiative. The multidimensional worldwide poverty index is also availible on the web (link).
The intuitive question arising from the data and empirical research on poverty is whether higher economic growth in less developed countries boosts the growth of income per capita and what is the role of institutional characteristics in economic development. The authors of the above-mentioned measure of poverty have shown that despite abundant economic growth in past years and falling income poverty rates, the share of population without access to clean water, sanitation and minimum required nutrition remained unchanged. The percentage of malnourished children in India decreased from 47 percent in 1998-98 to 46 percent 2005-06.
The theoretical and empirical literature on economic growth suggests that there is an inverse U-relationship between inequality and income per capita known as Kuznets curve (link). The intuition behind the relationship is simple. At the very low levels of income per capita, income inequality is low. Alongside the course of growing income per capita, income inequality steeply increases and, after reaching a maximum, it decreases as countries achieve higher levels of income per capita. The rate of income inequality is closely related to the evolution of economic policies over time. Wagner’s law, discussed in one of the previous posts, states that government spending over time increases due to long-run income elastic demand for public goods and capture of the democratic system by the particular interest groups that pose a permanent pressure on the growth of government spending and resist the reversals of government expenditures by trading votes.
There’s a wide array of disagreement among economists on the effect of income inequality on economic growth. Back in 2001, Joseph Stiglitz re-examined the East Asian economic miracle and concluded that the evidence from the period of high economic growth in East Asian countries suggests that income redistribution has a positive effect on economic growth (link). Stiglitz’s argument is based on the income distribution in East Asian countries during the economic miracle. East Asian countries have been known for relatively even distribution of income demonstrated by high Gini index and relatively high income tax rates.
On the other hand, the empirical investigation of the initial conditions in East Asian countries before the economic miracle shows that the political influence of interest groups had been relatively weak compared to Western Europe after the World War 2 when the productivity growth stalled from early 1970s onwards. The relative weakness of interest groups and a stable judicial system, inherited from English common law tradition, enabled high economic growth in the longer run given an enduring stability of property rights protection and the rule of law. In such conditions, income redistribution had relatively little effect on economic growth since the empirics of East Asian miracle suggests that the sizable proportion of growth in East Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan) had been driven by technological progress, investment and export orientation. Considering export orientation, Rodrik et. al (2005) provided the evidence (link) on the positive effect of high-quality export orientation on economic growth. The productivity growth in East Asian countries between 1975 and 1990 had been a pure example of economic miracle defined by the share of growth that could not be explained by the contribution of labor and capital input. In Taiwan and Hong Kong (link), total factor productivity accounted for about 60 percent of output per capita growth. Between 1975 and 1990, in Singapore, output per capita had increased by 8.0 percent. Consequently, the resulting outcome of almost two decades of robust productivity growth had been a significant decrease in national poverty rates (link). The lowest poverty rate, as defined by the measures of home authorities, is in Taiwan where 0.95 of the population live below the poverty threshold.
The basic set of policies that alleviate extreme poverty such as providing access to clean water, nutrition, medical protection against HIV/AIDS and basic sanitary standards have a positive effect on the economic growth and the standard of living. However, the major cause of persistent under-development in Subsaharan and Tropical Africa is mostly the lack of institutional enforcement of property rights, the rule of law and independent judiciary. In spite of billions of USD of direct foreign aid, countries such as Zambia, Sierra Leone, Mali and Rwanda endure in persistent poverty and under-development. Esther Duflo, this year’s recipient of John Bates Clark Award, has shown in several studies how field experiments can enlighten the understanding of incentives in least developed countries (link). Understanding the significance of incentives in reducing poverty is crucial to further examination of the relationship betwen income inequality and economic growth.
By R. C. Anderson, on July 22nd, 2008
There are many issues today regarding our food, where it comes from and why everyone doesn’t have enough. Some believe America directly affects the food resources overseas and drives mass starvation. The problem with this is that often it is only backed by the emotional argument regarding children starving around the globe. It is rarely, if ever, backed by numbers showing that the U.S. is tight-fisted with its food or money. To truly assess world hunger, it is important to look at what the U.S. has contributed as well as the effect world leaders have had on their countries.
According to a press release issued July 16 by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, the U.S. gives approximately 58% of the total money contributed to global food aid. In 2007, this equated to more than $1.78 billion. In 2008, $1.53 billion was appropriated with another $1.2 billion supplied by a bill passed by Congress. This means in 2008, Americans will give $2.73 billion to help those in foreign countries feed themselves and their family.
“Food for Progress”
For those that don’t believe $2.73 billion is enough, more numbers follow. For instance, according to Michael Yost, the administrator of the Foreign Agricultural Service, in 2007, the USDA initiated 21 food for progress (FFP) agreements in 15 countries. This provided $120 million. In 2006, Catholic Relief Services gave 4,400 metric tons of U.S.-donated food to feed over 32,700 students in 658 elementary schools in Honduras. This totaled $3.4 million. Food rations were also given to over 13,000 children up to five years of age and 7,000 pregnant women and new mothers. Expenses also come from other things such as 120 gardens and fish ponds, income for schools, training for teachers, sanitation systems and infrastructure for 77 of 100 of the neediest schools with work continuing at the final 23.
In 2006 in Guatemala, an FFP agreement used 8,000 tons of U.S. soybean meal and 2,000 tons of U.S. tallow to support a microcredit program. This created $3.2 million in revenue. This money was used to initiate a banking program which could provide loans for women. These loans allowed women to begin businesses to better support their families.
Another program, the McGovern-Dole, has given food, money and assistance to reduce hunger and improve education. Since 2000, more than 22 million children were fed in 41 countries. A third program, Trade and Investment Missions (TIMs), has the specific goal of increasing trade and investments in new markets around the world. Since 2005, new trade has produced $45.8 million in countries such as the Republic of Georgia and Kazakhstan and all parts of Africa.
As for Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2009, the U.S. is slated to spend $12.5 million to support farming, agricultural development, USDA volunteers and livestock management. Agriculture is a major force in these countries since 80% of Afghanistan’s population is involved with agriculture or livestock. In Iraq, agriculture is the second largest revenue source for the country’s gross domestic product. These industries employ 25% of the working population and are the largest Iraqi employers. To provide more money, the USDA has established a “Stocks-for-Food” program where government-owned commodities are exchanged for food aid. According to Yost, this new program is giving $120 million and has put $100 million in The Emergency Food Assistance Program. More than $20 million has gone to help 650,000 mothers and children in multiple countries.
To meet unexpected needs in Africa and other countries, President Bush has made another $200 million immediately available through the P.L. 480 Title II Program. In 2008, $850 million was given through this program with $395 million available in 2009.
Enough Blame to Go Around
Many times, populations starve not because of a lack of food but because food is mismanaged by the government. According to the biography Mao: The Unknown Story, in 1953, Mao took control of the food supply in order to export almost all of it to pay for his Superpower Programme. This program was established to satisfy Mao’s desire to “control the Earth.” According to Mao, the population only needed “140 kg of grain, and some only…110.” This is less than half the amount considered necessary for basic survival. He responded to the peasant’s pleas for more food with “educate peasants to eat less, and have more thin gruel.” While 30 million people died during peacetime due to this program, after 1958, 40 million died due to his “Great Leap Forward” plan which tightened his stranglehold on the country’s food resources.
More recently, a new problem has developed from genetically modified (GM) food. While much of America’s food sources are modified to produce more, faster, larger and cheaper, many countries have great disdain for GM foods. It would seem that if a population is starving, that any food aid would be happily accepted. In 2002, however, Zambia refused to receive GM corn provided by the UN’s World Food Programme even though they were facing a famine. In 2004, Hugo Chavez initiated a total ban on GM foods in Venezuela. In 2005, the Hungarian government refused GM corn even though it was authorized by the EU. Many would point out that the citizens refuse to eat such GM food, leaving the government blameless. Either way, millions are unnecessarily starving. (Read Jennifer Bunn’s blog on genetically modified foods for specifics.)
When one looks at the amount the U.S. contributes to help those in need as well as the roadblocks many of governments initiate to prevent food from getting to the people, one has to wonder why people are so willing to fully blame the U.S. for world hunger rather than lay at least some blame on the governments and people themselves.
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