Development theory in the past decade has met with increasingly heavy criticism. Dependency theories, as well as modes of production and world-system approaches, have come to be considered as internally inconsistent and inadequate for explaining the increasing diversity and unevenness of the Third World. This book confronts the theoretical impasse which many feel has been reached. Development scholars from various disciplines review recent changes in research priorities, procedures and orientations, and detect the emergence of new and diverse lines of theoretical development in the field. In particular, they deal with the important meta-theoretical, political, cultural and ethical questions that have come to the fore.

New Directions in Development Economics is divided into two parts. The first half considers the dilemna of growth with special reference to its environmental cost. The second half focuses on the role of the state in the context of the growing dominance of the free market argument. The contributors include Paul Collier, Partha Dasgupta, Ronald Findlay and Deepak Lal.

New Directions in Development: A Study of U.S. AID Donald R. Mickelwait, Charles F, Sweet, and Elliott R. Morss In 1973 Congress legislated a fundamental change in U.S. foreign aid policy: rather than provide general assistance to developing nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) would focus on helping the rural poor in those nations. AID commissioned Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), to prepare a strategy for making the change toward "New Directions" in development and then to assist in the design and implementation of a number of projects using the new strategy. The authors describe the bureaucratic and administrative problems that confronted Development Alternatives in this job, giving particular attention to the administrative and bureaucratic barriers within AID itself. They conclude with a set of recommendations for reform that are essential if the agency is to attain its "New Directions" objectives.

For countries as diverse as China and Mauritius, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been a powerful tool to attract foreign investment, promote export-oriented growth, and generate employment; for many others, the results have been less than encouraging. While the benefits and limitations of zones will no doubt continue to be debated, what is clear is that policymakers are increasingly attracted to them as an instrument of trade, investment, industrial, and spatial policy. Since the mid 1980s, the number of newly-established zones has grown rapidly in almost all regions, with dramatic growth in developing countries. In parallel with this growth and in the evolving context of global trade and investment, zones are also undergoing significant change in both their form and function, with traditional export processing zones (EPZs) increasingly giving way to larger and more flexible SEZ models. This new context will bring significant opportunities for developing countries to take advantage of SEZs, but will also raise new challenges to their successful design and implementation. This volume aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role and practice of SEZs in developing countries, in order to better equip policymakers in making effective decisions in planning and implementing SEZ programs. It covers some of the emerging issues and challenges in SEZs – including upgrading, regional integration, WTO compliance, innovation, the environment, and gender issues – with practical case examples from SEZ programs in developing countries.

This book offers a collection of valuable guidelines for making decisions concerning the future development of transport networks and traffic engineering. The decision-making support systems described here will certainly attract the interest of those who face the challenge of finding solutions to problems concerning modern transport systems on a daily basis. Consequently, the book is chiefly intended for local authorities involved in planning and preparing development strategies for specific transport-related areas (in both urban and regional contexts), as well as for representatives of business and industry who are directly engaged in the implementation of traffic engineering solutions. The guidelines provided in the respective chapters help to address the given problem soundly, and to simplify the selection of an appropriate strategy. The topics covered include increasing the competitiveness of public transport, the status quo of electric vehicle infrastructures worldwide, methods for calming urban traffic as an element of sustainable transport development, speed traffic zones and electric buses, car-sharing systems in Poland, a method for deconstructing the regional travel demand model, monitoring urban traffic using floating car data, problems of deliveries in urban agglomeration distribution systems, estimating the number of threatened people in case of fire in road tunnels, and road pavement evaluation using advanced tools. Since the book also considers new approaches to theoretical models (including traffic flow surveys and measurements, transport behaviors, human factors in traffic engineering, and road condition modeling), it will also appeal to researchers and scientists studying these problems. The book gathers selected papers presented at the 15th Scientific and Technical Conference “Transport Systems. Theory and Practice”, organized by the Department of Transport Systems and Traffic Engineering, Silesian University of Technology in Katowice, Poland on September 17–19, 2018.