First published in 1984, this work explores the issues surrounding the industrialisation of the Third World at the beginning of the 1980s. The expectation that Newly Industrialising Countries would facilitate industrial growth via an outward-orientated strategy had begun to be the combination of growing recession, growing protectionism and the diffusion of radical microelectronics-related technical change. In addition, the high indebtedness of developing countries made them increasingly dependent on assistance from the IMF and IBRD, whose policies increased the tendency towards de-industrialisation. The papers in this volume explore all of these issues and their implication for LDC industrial strategy in the 1980s.

First published in 1984, this work explores the issues surrounding the industrialisation of the Third World at the beginning of the 1980s. The expectation that Newly Industrialising Countries would facilitate industrial growth via an outward-orientated strategy had begun to be the combination of growing recession, growing protectionism and the diffusion of radical microelectronics-related technical change. In addition, the high indebtedness of developing countries made them increasingly dependent on assistance from the IMF and IBRD, whose policies increased the tendency towards de-industrialisation. The papers in this volume explore all of these issues and their implication for LDC industrial strategy in the 1980s.

In third-world countries an increasing number of people have been drawn into the process of industrialization as wage workers. The analyses here presented cover the limits set by workers to exploitation in workshop production, ethnicity as a workers' strategy, the role of workers' absenteeism and turnover, and labour strategies in a situation of recession and de-industrialisation. Using a historical approach labour migration, union strategy for democratisation, and the world-scale pattern of labour unrest are studied as outcomes of social conflict.

How the rise of globalization over the past two centuries helps explain the income gap between rich and poor countries today. Today's wide economic gap between the postindustrial countries of the West and the poorer countries of the third world is not new. Fifty years ago, the world economic order—two hundred years in the making—was already characterized by a vast difference in per capita income between rich and poor countries and by the fact that poor countries exported commodities (agricultural or mineral products) while rich countries exported manufactured products. In Trade and Poverty, leading economic historian Jeffrey G. Williamson traces the great divergence between the third world and the West to this nexus of trade, commodity specialization, and poverty. Analyzing the role of specialization, de-industrialization, and commodity price volatility with econometrics and case studies of India, Ottoman Turkey, and Mexico, Williamson demonstrates why the close correlation between trade and poverty emerged. Globalization and the great divergence were causally related, and thus the rise of globalization over the past two centuries helps account for the income gap between rich and poor countries today.

This book is about the evolution of developing countries in the world economy situated in its wider historical context, spanning centuries, but with a focus on the period since the mid-twentieth century. It traces the rise and 'catch up' of the developing world and the shift in the balance of power in the world economy.

A collection of essays by a number of internationally-known economists, this book is essential reading for those interested in development policy in the Third World. It provides new insights on a number of long-standing controversies about development policy in such fields as external constraints, import substitution, the debt problem, direct foreign investment, counter-trade, IMF conditionality and the impact of currency devalutation.