treehwa.blogg.se - Paul collier the bottom billion summary

Consequently, the citizenry are less likely to demand financial accountability from the government.

Natural resources mean that a government does not have to tax its citizens.

Resources make conflict for the resources nearly inevitable due to the lack of transparency provided by government officials who often use surpluses of natural resources for their own benefit.

Collier attributes this to a variety of causes: The Natural Resource Trap: Countries that are rich in natural resources are paradoxically usually worse off than countries that are not. Collier also argues that the longer a country stays in a state of conflict, the more players become established that profit from the state of tumult, making the situation increasingly intractable. Additionally, in the time period immediately following a major conflict, relapse is highly likely.

The Conflict Trap: Civil wars (with an estimated average cost of $64bn each ) and coups incur large economic costs to a country. These countries typically suffer from one or more development traps. The book suggests that, whereas the majority of the 5 billion people in the "developing world" are getting richer at an unprecedented rate, a group of countries (mostly in Africa and Central Asia but with a smattering elsewhere) are stuck and that development assistance should be focused heavily on them. On his reckoning, there are just under 60 such economies, home to almost 1 billion people. In the book Collier argues that there are many countries whose residents have experienced little, if any, income growth over the 1980s and 1990s. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It is a 2007 book by Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford University, exploring the reasons why impoverished countries fail to progress despite international aid and support.