Public expenditure planning in Papua New Guinea: an evaluation of innovation

This paper discusses the problems faced by non-socialist developing countries in evolving successful systems of comprehensive public expenditure planning and makes a series of proposals designed to avoid some of these problems, e.g. by outlining precise processes, mechanisms and institutions which might generate and maintain political and bureaucratic support and correspond to a more realistic view of politics, as well as developing a framework within which public expenditure proposals can be consistently compared. The paper refers throughout to the experience of Papua New Guinea.The evaluation of the approach and processes of public expenditure planning in Papua New Guinea is divided into two parts. The first part assesses the system's achievements, costs and weaknesses and then considers the impact which the system itself has had on framing and developing new policy. In the second part, the general lessons which may be learned from Papua New Guinea's experience are discussed.     

Mining enclaves and taxation

This paper examines certain macroeconomic effects of major mining projects in developing countries, paying special attention to the case of Papua New Guinea. It goes on to assess the contribution that such projects can make to economic development indirectly through their contributions to government revenue. This paper reviews existing evidence on the linkage effects of foreign investment in mining projects in developing countries and presents as new evidence the results of a study on the macroeconomic effects of major mining projects in Papua New Guinea. Considerable support is found for the proposition that such projects tend to perform as enclaves, having only weak direct links with host national economies. This paper stresses the importance of applying fiscal arrangements which can be expected to appropriate a large share of the mineral rent from intra-marginal mining projects while preserving the incentive to invest. Fiscal arrangements of this type are being applied in Papua New Guinea and are indeed able to capture very large benefits for the country. In Papua New Guinea the enclave nature of large-scale mining projects is consistent with their making large contributions to progress towards national objectives, and this paper argues that given the application of appropriate fiscal arrangements, this conclusion can be extended to other developing countries.     

Stabilization: The political economy of overkill

This paper considers whether national and international aspects of the IMF's stabilization programmes during the 1970s and early 1980s have resulted in a process of ‘overkill’ — or, in other words, a process of economic retrenchment which went much further than was strictly necessary in terms of what could have been regarded as reasonable objectives. In the international context, the author describes how the attack on inflation has become an end in itself, at the expense of other stated objectives of the IMF, thus creating a distortion of its priorities. The paper discusses errors of diagnosis which have led to this disorientation and explains why deflationary policies should not be regarded as a panacea. The paper then considers the nead for equity and efficiency in the distribution of the political and economic costs of adjustment.The next section of this paper discusses the assumptions underlying the IMF's treatment of Fund members and to what extent ‘even-handedness’ in the application of stabilization measures may result in inequality of burden-sharing among borrowers. Problems related to monetarist theories and the consequent policies are examined, followed by a consideration of the dangers involved in devising ‘straightforward’ performance criteria in the form of precise monetary targets that can readily be monitored by the IMF. This means of evaluating the national adjustment policies' success is seen to be unsatisfactory, viz. the frequency of stand-by arrangement breakdowns and mistakes in forecasting.The paper concludes that the concept of unilateral adjustment is not an acceptable basis for IMF supervision of the international monetary system. In addition, care should be taken to avoid overkill in determining the degree and character of adjustment needed in stabilization programmes. One possible solution to the extra burden imposed on the LDCs might be a liberalization of the compensatory financing facility with the objective of applying the same kind of regime to imports as to exports.     

An econometric investigation of the condition of children in Italy

This paper provides some analytical contributions in evaluating the impact of worsening economic conditions and the prospect of more restrictive social policies on children's status in Italy. It specifies a causal model linking child's status to a set of variables (including, for example, parent's education, parent's employment, etc.). The specific effect of those variables has been estimated on the basis of two sets of data. The first consists of pooled cross-sectional and time-series information for infant mortality and the other variables indicated above. The second consists of data drawn from a 1979 household survey for the city of Turin. The results indicate that mortality rates, particularly neonatal rates, are sensitive to economic conditions and fluctuations. The employment level of mothers is also found to have a strong effect on child psychosocial status.     

Basic needs: The case of Sri Lanka

This article has two related objectives: to judge Sri Lanka's success in meeting its ‘basic needs’ and growth objectives, and to use Sri Lanka's experience to cast light on general hypotheses regarding basic needs. The analysis suggests that Sri Lanka's social expenditures had a substantial cost in growth and unemployment. However, largely because of these social programmes, it has the best social indicators, compared to its income, of any country for which data are available. Its growth has, surprisingly, been above average for low-income countries. Implications for basic-needs programmes include the need to ‘target’ social programmes, the high priority of primary education and the potential high impact, but also high costs, of assuring minimum caloric intakes.     

The New Deal at war: alphabet agencies’ expenditure patterns, 1940-1945

While a multitude of New Deal “relief, recovery, and reform” agencies were created in response to the 1930s economic shock, many of these same agencies were subsumed by the Federal Works Agency and played key national defense roles during the 1940s. We examine the wartime expenditure patterns of these agencies, as well as spending on war supply contracts and war-related industrial facilities, to determine whether Depression-era economic goals were addressed during the Second World War. We find that some specific aspects of the New Deal economic agenda were carried out during the war. Furthermore, wartime spending by the alphabet agencies was significantly correlated with the expenditure patterns of those agencies during the 1930s, suggesting that the transition from economic to military objectives may not have been as pointed as the Roosevelt Administration often asserted.     

Trade and growth: The Nigerian experience

This paper analyses the impact of trade on Nigeria's economic growth. Using a two-gap model, it estimates the relationships between exports, foreign capital and economic growth. The paper also provides an assessment of the relative influence of Nigeria's two main types of export (agricultural produce and petroleum) on economic growth. The results of the analysis provide empirical support for the hypothesis that trade has been an important engine of growth in Nigeria. The paper recommends, as part of Nigeria's strategy for achieving rapid economic development, the vigorous pursuit of an export promotion policy.     

Failures in the strategy against poverty

Despite the considerable work done by international and national agencies in transferring technical skills and resources to ldcs, inequality of wealth and income has increased. The author discusses the causes of dissatisfaction where expectations have been raised and of disillusion where steady progress or development has not been achieved. The author's suggestions as to the economic and political reasons for this disappointment and the changes in strategy which are now required are put forth in this article.     

Price control techniques in poor countries: the Tanzanian case

This paper looks at the techniques used by the Tanzanian Price Commission to fix maximum prices for locally manufactured goods. The effects of these techniques on the duel objectives of price control – economic efficiency and political stability – are analysed. After an examination of possible alternative techniques it is concluded that, despite its theoretical weaknesses, the present system of cost-plus pricing is probably the most appropriate for most Tanzanian industries, especially in view of the country's severe manpower constraint. However, greater incentives to improve productive efficiency could be incorporated into the present system.     

Pakistan and the socialist countries: Trade and aid

The economic relations between Pakistan and the socialist countries are examined against their political background. The sharp deterioration in Pakistan's political relations with the socialist countries in the 1950s was accompanied by a contraction in trade, which had almost been a one-way flow until the early 1960s, consisting of Pakistan's exports. The political rapprochement with the socialist countries following the 1962 Sino-Indian clash coincided with a tremendous spurt in trade, largely under the aegis of barter trade agreements. Trade turnover increased fivefold in the sixties and Pakistan became a recipient of socialist aid. An examination of the structure of trade reveals that Pakistan's exports to the socialist countries diversified considerably less than total exports, but that the terms of trade were more favourable. The quantity, kinds, and sources of socialist aid are also examined.     

Hungarian agriculture: A model for the socialist world?

Hungary's status as a model in agriculture is examined in terms of its economic, social and political performance, its planning and organizational components and the contextual factors affecting its transferability. In economic and social performance the Hungarian strategy compares favourably with the rest of Eastern Europe and the USSR. Planning and institutional factors contributing to this performance include the New Economic Mechanism planning approach, autonomous agricultural producers' co-operatives, new structures for diffusion of technology, and integration of household producers into the commodity system. While the transferability of the model remains doubtful due to factors such as size, technical base, and political choices, increased participation in the world economy may force the USSR and the rest of Eastern Europe into reforms bearing some resemblance to those in Hungary.     

我国短期经济增长动力研究——基于经济增长差分模型

根据国民收入理论,从投入产出与需求消耗对经济增长的影响出发,以收入决定理论为基础,建立起短期经济增长差分模型,用来帮助一个国家根据短期经济目标合理地制定经济调控战略和实现路径,促进短期经济目标的实现。在此基础上对我国经济增长动力进行实证分析,提出我国现阶段经济增长存在的主要问题和解决方案。     

Development planning in The Gambia: The gap between planners' and farmers' perceptions,expectations and objectives

This paper challenges the prevalent view that irrigation development largely depends on engineering, agricultural and managerial inputs and argues with reference to Gambian irrigation projects that new technologies may be adapted by farmers in ways that are incompatible with planners' objectives. The conclusion is that planners need to give greater attention to the organization and control of production and consumption within the household. This would require a change in attitudes among many planners, the recruitment of more social scientists into planning teams, and greater co-operation between planners, farmers of all socio- economic categories and extension agents.     

Pakistan's development: An overview

This is the text of two lectures given in the summer of 1980, one at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, and the other at the National Defense College, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The lectures attempted to identify some non-economic determinants of Pakistan's economic performance since the standard economic explanations are not very satisfactory for analysing the country's rather erratic performance over the last three decades. The lectures reviewed Pakistan's economic history from 1947, the time of independence, to 1977, when political power moved once again from a civilian government to a military regime. The lectures underscored the importance of the nature of external economic development, the extent of government commitment to development and the level of participation in economic management as important determinants of economic performance. One of the important conclusions reached was that the governments in the Third World must pay heed to these factors in planning for the difficult times that lie ahead.     

Mexico from bust to boom: A political evaluation of the 1976–1979 stabilization programme

This paper evaluates Mexico's recent experience of economic stabilization policies (under the the 3-yr Extended Fund Facility arranged with the IMF in September 1976) from a comparative politics standpoint. By comparison with various South American experiences of inflation and stabilization that were discussed in the same Wilson Centre workshop, Mexico's short-term performance must be rated quite favourably. This was not a case in which Fund orthodoxy prevailed at every point, nor was the Fund analysis accepted without qualification by Mexico's policy-markers. At the end of the period, economic disequilibria, as measured by IMF criteria, remained considerably larger than the 3-yr plan had envisaged, but ‘confidence’ had been restored and rapid growth was in prospect. The interpretation offered in the paper is that Mexico's cyclical pattern of presidential politics largely determined the effective contents of the stabilization package, and that the resilience of the Mexican system of political management goes far to explain why the economic outcome was more favourable than in the South American cases. An accident of geological endowment (the nation's huge oil resources) certainly accentuated the process of recovery from ‘bust’ to ‘boom’, but this factor did not operate in isolation, and should not be considered an adequate explanation on its own. The impact of a geological endowment upon economic conditions depends upon political mediation. However, although this paper seeks to highlight the contribution of Mexican political management to the recent short-term economic improvement, it concludes with some qualifications. The final section considers some constraints on the scope and efficacy of Mexican ‘reformism’, particularly in relation to longer-term and more structural problems.     

East European aid to India

The aid-relationship is part of a wider economic relationship between India and the East European countries, in a far more integrated sense than is the case with some of India's other donors. The group has been a significant though not a dominant source of aid to India, the USSR being the most important member of the group. Easy generalizations about the terms of East European aid, in comparison to aid from other sources, are not possible. The same is true for India's experience in the actual utilization of aid from various sources. The main usefulness of the East European countries as a source of aid has lain in their willingness to give aid for particular public-sector projects and in improving India's bargaining powers vis-à-vis other donors.     

The fourth mobilization: New phase of the Tachai movement

By the early 1970s the ‘Learn from Tachai’ campaign in China was seen there as having had a marked effect in increasing agricultural production. In 1975 the movement was made the subject of a national conference and then launched afresh on a broader and more intense scale, with the unit for emulation becoming the country rather than the village. It is now commensurate with the great mass movements of the 1950s which transformed China's rural society. The paper describes the new movement, illustrating its impact from the writer's field experience. (The paper may be seen as a sequel to the writer's ‘Learning from Tachai’, World Development. Vol. 3, Nos. 7 & 8 (July – August 1975)).     

What are the least developed countries and what benefits may result from the Paris conference?

This paper focuses on the category of the least developed countries in the particular context of the Paris Conference, 1–14 September 1981, sponsored by the United Nations to agree on the Substantial New Programme of Action for the 1980s on behalf of these countries. There is first an examination of the category of least developed countries, the adequacy of criteria used to establish the category, the general economic performance of these countries during the 1960s and 1970s, and the pre-conference results of the list's creation. There follows a preliminary assessment of the results of the Paris Conference. The economic justifications for inclusion in the category are subject to much valid criticism and the likely benefits from this UN Conference will be much less than what the least developed countries themselves calculated to be necessary. Nonetheless, the category is a useful policy tool; and the results of the Conference appear a qualified success, especially in light of the unpropitious international context.     

The economic transformation of Spain: Systemic change and accelerated growth, 1959–73

Spain's economic policy-makers have been eminently successful in transforming a less developed, inward-oriented corporate state into a more developed market economy. The profound power shift from the Falange to the new ‘Europeanist’ technocrats signified Spain's emergence into a post-ideological era in which, for an interval, from 1960 to 1973, economics held primacy over politics. During this period Spain achieved the second highest GNP growth rate after Japan among the 24 OECD member nations. This phenomenal performance was associated with the international transfer of technology and advanced managerial methods, greater competition in the product and resource markets, and the renewal and modernization of the nation's capital stock.