Privatising old-age social security: Latin American and Eastern Europe compared, by Katharina Müller (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003, pp. 192)

✍ Scribed by Roddy McKinnon

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 29 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1102

✦ Synopsis

industries, they need to allocate them in a disciplined way. This is clearly supported by the success of certain subsidies in some East Asian countries. Perez, on the other hand, presents a detailed and careful discussion about how technological change provides opportunities for development. She emphasizes that these opportunities are a moving target. Perez puts technology as a key element for development and argues, convincingly, that new policy actions are needed. She recommends investing in research and steering technologies toward the improvement of production networks. Both state and market are needed in this context.

Binswanger and Lutz, Chapter 8, focus on the role of the agricultural sector on economic growth, and conclude that developed countries should eliminate their subsidies to farmers, and that developing countries should continue removing their domestic distortions (high protection to the manufacturing sector, overvaluated exchange rates). Another important contribution is Chapter 9, written by Maizels. This essay is a fine discussion on the role of the commodity sector in developing countries. One important conclusion is that commodity prices have been falling during the last decades, and that a new international commodity strategy is necessary to stop this decline. From a long-run perspective, developing countries should diversify their economies away from the production of commodities. Chapter 10, written by Frances Stewart, is an excellent discussion on the relationship between income distribution and economic growth. By reviewing the empirical literature, Stewart reaches the conclusion that a more equal income distribution results in faster growth. Several strategies to obtain a more equalitarian growth are discussed in this paper (agrarianfocused strategies, high levels of widespread education, and assets redistribution). The bad news for policy makers is that the success of these policies may depend on country-specific conditions.

In summary, this is an impressive collection of essays that adds significantly to the discussion of policies for developing countries in the context of globalization. I would strongly recommend it to academics and students interested in development, as well as policy makers in developing countries.