ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Developing CountriesSubscribe to Developing Countries

Climate Crisis, Global Debt, and the Fermi Paradox

In a recent article, Yıldızoğlu (2021) reminded us of the Fermi Paradox, which can be summarised as: Although the probability of the existence of other forms of life in the universe is sufficiently high, why have we not met any? Enrico Fermi, the Italian–American physicist and the creator of the...

COVID-19 Vaccine Accessibility

The patent waiver procedure at the World Trade Organization needs to be fast-tracked. The global community must not be constrained by the interests of private industry and saving lives is what matters.

What Is Stopping the Obvious?

For the vast majority of human existence, international trade was fuelled by renewable energy. Trade winds were used to cruelly bring enslaved labour from Africa to grow cane, limes, bananas, and cocoa in the Caribbean and powered the windmills that turned the cane into molasses and sugar. The Gulf...

History from Below

Structure, Consciousness and Social Transformation: The Adivasis in Thane District, Maharashtra and The Subaltern Subject in Structured Historical Process by Denzil Saldhana, New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2015; pp 611 and 108, respectively, ₹ 1,695 and ₹ 295.

Governing Capital Flows

Ruling Capital: Emerging Markets and the Reregulation of Cross-Border Finance by Kevin P Gallagher; Cornell University, 2015; pp xi +233, $29.95.

Adolescent Obesity: An Epidemic in the Offing?

Obesity rates have already reached alarming proportions in high income countries, and are rising rapidly in developing countries, especially among families that are both resource and time constrained. If measures are not taken to head off the problem in countries like India, the consequences could be dire.

Determinants of Sovereign Defaults

Developing-country defaults on their external debt repayments are a function of both their 'willingness to pay' as well as their 'ability to pay'. While the ability to repay can be captured by economic factors like the growth rate of the economy and external shocks, willingness to repay is more difficult to measure. In this paper, it is emphasised that political factors are important determinants of the willingness to repay and should be treated as an explanatory variable explicitly. A multivariate probit model is estimated that tests the hypothesis that the probability of default is inversely related to the level of democracy in the debtor country. It is shown that the evidence doesn't support the hypothesis.

IMF Conditions Stunt Growth

The IMF-World Bank recipe for poverty reduction in Pakistan has been accompanied by stringent conditions that have often exacerbated the country's economic woes and failed to meet the lending institutions' own targets. Also, governments in Pakistan have always passed the blame for these harsh steps on to the Fund-Bank combine, thus ducking out of tough decisions on land reform, imposition of agricultural income tax and beefing up tax administration.

IMF's New Guidelines on Conditionality

Will the IMF's new guidelines on conditionality, the outcome of a review initiated some two years back in response to criticism of the Fund's handling of the adjustment problems of crisis-hit countries in Asia, make a difference to countries' adjustment efforts in the future? How far are the new guidelines different from the 1979 ones?

Urbanisation in Developing Countries

This article discusses some of the major issues surrounding the process of urbanisation in developing countries. It reviews the broad trends in urbanisation, discusses the emergence and growth of very large cities and then focuses on urban primacy. This is followed by a discussion of the contribution of rural to urban migration to urban growth and an analysis of the role of a free entry urban traditional or informal sector both in migration process and in contributing to national output.

Privatisation: Theory and Evidence

Privatisation is very much the flavour of the day. Many enthusiasts of privatisation seem to believe that a shift from public to private ownership will automatically make for improved performance. Yet there is little in economic theory or the empirical evidence on privatisation that lends support to such a simplistic belief. The evidence on the impact of privatisation is by no means unmixed. In particular, in less developed countries, where law enforcement and corporate governance tend to be weak, private ownership does not necessarily make for better performance. It is possible, based on the research on privatisation, to draw some tentative conclusions for privatisation policy in a context such as ours.

Transgenic Crops and Developing Countries

The use of biotechnology to grow transgenic crops with specific beneficial traits is being touted as the way ahead to feed the rapidly growing populations in poor countries. However, the drive in agricultural biotechnology is led largely by industrial countries, and particularly by private companies, with possible attendant bottlenecks in the use of such technology by poor countries. This article tries to give a comprehensive overview of the merits and limitations of transgenic crop technologies in a development context.
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