This collection of Angus Maddison's work, which includes new essays, offers a comparative, quantitative analysis of the economic performance of nations, providing a clear view of why growth rates differ and why real income and productivity spreads are so wide. An autobiographical essay is included.

A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.

ÔNot only is this excellent collection of papers a fitting tribute to Angus Maddison, it is also a great resource for thinking about future patterns of global economic growth Ð both in the BRICS and the OECD Ð based on key insights from historical experience.Õ Ð Nicholas Crafts, University of Warwick, UK ÔAngus Maddison may no longer be with us, but his spirit is very much alive. This collection of essays Ð including one by Maddison himself Ð shows how the methods he pioneered continue to shed new light on the comparative performance of nations and inspire successive generations of scholars.Õ Ð Barry Eichengreen, University of California at Berkeley, US ÔThe distinguished editors, leading authorities in the field of comparative quantitative economic development, have gathered a stellar group of authors to address arguably the most challenging question of our time: understanding development dynamics over time and across countries. They are to be congratulated for this comprehensive, stimulating and insightful volume. It is a fitting tribute to the late Angus Maddison, an intellectual giant in the study of long-term economic development, to whom the book is dedicated.Õ Ð Hal Hill, Australian National University World economic performance over the last 50 years has been spectacular. The post-war period has witnessed impressive growth rates in Western Europe and Japan, and in recent times, China and India. This new book discusses these issues and tackles topical questions such as: what are the socio-economic and institutional factors that have contributed to this impressive performance? Will China and India continue to grow at the same rate over the next two decades? What are the prospects for Japan, the US and other advanced economies? The book brings together contributions by eminent scholars including the late Angus Maddison, Professors Justin Lin, Bob Gordon, Ross Garnaut, Bart van Ark and others to provide answers to these fascinating questions. The chapters analyse the economic performance of selected countries including China, India, Japan, Indonesia and the US, as well as Western Europe, Latin America and developing countries as a group. The time period of the study is from 1850 to the present and includes forecasts to 2030. This well-documented book will be of considerable interest to development economists and country specialists working on countries such as China and India, economic historians who are interested in explaining the growth performance of countries, economists and economic statisticians who are interested in the measurement issues, and international organizations such as the OECD, World Bank and the UN. General readers and non-specialists who are interested in the world economic performance will also find much to interest them in this book.

Making Poor Nations Rich illustrates the importance of institutions that support economic freedom and private property rights for promoting the form of productive entrepreneurship that leads to sustained increases in countries' standard of living.

This text charts development economics as it evolved from Adam Smith to new or endogenous growth theory. Thirlwall is critical of the latter & its predecessor neo-classical growth theory, & tries to put back demand as a driving force in growth theory.

The ability to connect theoretical macroeconomics to the analysis of the economic and political performance of a given country is an essential skill for global investors. In Country Analysis: Understanding Economic and Political Performance, David M. Currie takes a unique analytical approach to the subject, clearly demonstrating the relationship between theory and application in investing practices. This valuable book shows how to interpret country performance and provides the practising investor with sufficient background on economic principles to be able to understand and interpret country summaries that appear in business periodicals and other media. It covers key topics such as the Washington Consensus and the three major categories of economic decisions - fiscal policy, monetary policy and trade policy. It includes an important chapter on the political aspect of government performance, to give the reader an understanding of economic decisions in their true context. Country Analysis explains the reasoning behind the criteria used in evaluating country risk and economic performance, without the need for a sophisticated understanding of economics or mathematics. Each chapter includes a series of text boxes that include real-life examples from business periodicals to reinforce what is discussed and enable readers to practice identifying and interpreting relevant information. Practitioners making investment decisions in global markets, as well as students in MBA and other courses, will find this immensely practical book a valuable aid to critical decision making.