Nutrition and national development: Establishing the connection

The three major strands of the nutrition planning literature — the socio-economic consequences of malnutrition, its determinants and characteristics, and the solutions offered to the problem — are examined by the authors and found wanting. There are serious limitations both in analysis of the problems and proposals for action in most work on nutrition policies because macro-level social, institutional, economic and political factors are neglected.     

PRIVATE INVESTMENT AND MACROECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT:A Survey

This article reviews theories of investment behavior and examinesempirical studies of investment in developing countries. Theemphasis is on understanding the interactions among macroeconomicpolicies, structural adjustment, and private investment. Thearticle deals with the effect of exchange rate policy on investment,the relationship between public and private investment, theimportance of market imperfections and financial constraintson capital formation, and the effect of economic instabilityon irreversible investment decisions.      

INFLATION AND THE COSTS OF STABILIZATION: Historical and Recent Experiences and Policy Lessons

This article reviews various experiences with stabilization.It first examines stabilization programs in the context of hyperinflation—lookingat the experiences of Austria and Germany in the early 1920sand Bolivia in 1985—and then reviews and interprets theresults of orthodox stabilization plans (applied in Argentina,Chile, and Uruguay during the mid-1970s and early 1980s) andthose of heterodox programs (the austral plan in Argentina andthe cruzado plan in Brazil, with a glance at the Mexican andIsraeli experiences). The paper concludes with a discussionof conceptual issues and implications for the design of stabilizationpolicies.      

SAVING AND INVESTMENT: PARADIGMS, PUZZLES, POLICIES

The 1990s have seen a renewed interest in issues of capitalaccumulation and growth. New paradigms for saving, investment,and growth have been advanced to address theoretical and empiricalpuzzles and to guide the design of better policies. This paperprovides a policy-oriented review of recent theoretical andempirical work on the determinants of saving and investmentand on their links to growth. It takes stock of new findingsas well as still unresolved questions and gives particular attentionto empirical regularities and to the policy issues relevantto developing countries.