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There exists the... "Adam Smith of the Arabs": Ibn Khaldun. He lived during the 14th century. The work of his that focuses on Economics is Muqaddimah translated in English in 1958 as "The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History".
He advocated less involvement of the state in production and trade activities, which should focus instead on stabilization ...
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Direct predecessors to Adam Smith within the classical tradition (maybe a more useful distinction than modern) include Hume, Locke and Dudley North. Before the classical economists, there were the physiocrats (18th century), such as Francois Quesnay and Turgot. The physiocrats emphasised agricultural productivity as a driver of the wealth of nations. They ...
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One argument brought forward (it is a generalization/argument for lack of infrastructures) is the Acemoglu-Robinson hypothesis of extractive versus inclusive institutions.
Long-story short: some institutions are good for (long term) growth ("inclusive"), and some are good for short-term extraction of resources ("extractive"). Depending on whether the elites ...
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I like this question, in the sense that although it is broad, I think it can be answered concisely and factually.
Singapore and China (from your previous question) are largely authoritarian countries. So they were both able to exert a lot of government influence over their development programs. In this respect, they are not similar to Caribbean countries.
...
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"Institutions" can be defined in many ways... I will guess some things that might interest you:
Transparency international measures every year corruption perceptions in many countries.
The World Bank also measures many aspects of instutional framework of countries, for example 'ease of doing business'.
OECD does a lot of analysis, you might find something ...
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Daron Acemoglu's papers on institution could be a very good way to enter in this kind of issues.
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This depends on long-run economic and demographic trends that are very difficult to forecast.
That said, the medium fertility scenario in the UN's 2012 World Population Prospects puts the population in 2080 of China at 1173 million, of Europe at 659 million, and of the US at 446 million. Since the combined population of Europe and the US, at 1105 million, ...
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Of course this is is possible. China is a very large economy currently and it is likely quite a way away from reaching its production frontier. It has lots of room to grow.
A lot can happen in 65 years and any forecasting this far into the future will be subject to a high degree of error. Don't forget that the US and Europe are dynamic as well. The current ...
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I want to know if it's valid to talk about the economic growth and development of a city instead of a country
In principle there is nothing wrong with narrowing your research question down to municipal level. There are studies that look at economic growth on urban level. Here is just an example that came out of quick google scholar search:
Ding, Chengri, ...
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Too long, didn't read: the market does not care.
Colombia's Pension Reform: Fiscal and Macroeconomic Effects, by Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, states black on white (p 22) that
issuing explicit domestic debt for paying off implicit government debt does not have first-round macroeconomic and financial effects
on the condition that the financial markets see ...
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Legendary Indian diplomat of Mauryan era, Kautilya (or Chanakya or Vishnugupt), is Indian equivalent of Adam Smith. It is estimated that he wrote his classic book Arthshastra (literal meaning: Economics) in 3rd century BCE. Both Kautilya and Arthshastra are mentioned in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain texts. Wikipedia has quite accessible entries on both.
The ...
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While a lack of infrastructure and public goods may explain poverty in a short-term perspective, it is widely considered that institutions are the key factor in the long term (how could infrastructure and public goods be provided without suitable institutions?).
As well as Acemoglu & Robinson, referred to in FooBar's answer, two important writers on ...
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Articles
These papers discuss institutions as institutions were covered in the economic literature. Better to read them in a chronological order.
Acemoglu, Daron, and Simon Johnson. “Unbundling Institutions.” Journal of Political Economy 113, no. 5 (2005): 949–95.
Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. “Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of ...
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I have to say I do not believe in simple all encompassing answers. The reasons behind the differences are probably complex and multitude, varying from country to country. Below are some answers that one runs into and I think these probably account for a share of the inequality.
The book Why Nations Fail deals with the first question extensively. It is a ...
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Yes, there is some evidence that immoral behavior, as exemplified though political corruption, is bad for economic development. The body of literature is large and to the extent that I am familiar with it, some corruption can "grease the wheels" and hasten development. In general, massive amounts of corruption is seen as a serious hinderence to development.
...
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There is a lot of newish research on the adverse consequences of Globalisation and more generally De-industrialization on low skilled workers in developed economies. A good place to start is Autor, Dorn, Hanson in the AER 2013. David Autor has other interesting work on this topic as well as on automation.
Your questions have quite a normative ring to ...
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Update
Resource Curse literature attempts to address the issues you are raising, take a look at here and here.
Here is an interesting example of a technology transfer case.
Original answer
They do, in fact, have increased the share of R&D spending by a huge margin in the past 5 years. Some of these countries see commerce, trade and tourism as more ...
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Decreasing returns to standard of living means that if you add a certain amount $\delta$ to the income of a low income person, then the increase in her standard of living is bigger than if you would give the same amount to a high income person.
Let $SL(x)$ be the standard of living for a person with income $x$.
Take a person with income $x$ and a person with ...
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For common definitions of the word development the NIIP would be a very bad measure. The NIIP is a measure of net foreign debt. I don't see any clear first order link between foreign debt or assets and economic development.
A popular measure of development is the HDI, which is constructed from data on live expectancy, adult literacy rates and GDP.
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Your question brakes down into:
- Alternatives to measure "economic development": there are several ways to interpret what development is, it can be social, intensity of money flows, or volume of "money flows".
If you look for social development and well-being, the HDI (Human Development Index) is a good start, but there are several others like the Genuine ...
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I am not an expert in biology but let me give you some intuition through it.
For instance if you have some impurities in your blood. There are two ways to remove that impure blood from your body.
1) To give you some medicine that enters your system to cure you. This is a slow procedure and may not guarantee concrete results.
2) To artificially suck ...
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The terms developed and developing are UNDP terms.
Read the paper at the link below - it goes through the UNDP, World bank and IMF classifications and it's an IMF working paper so i'd class that as referenceable. At the very least it will point you to better sources.
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2011/wp1131.pdf
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There is a great deal to consider when discussing resource rich countries. Countries that rely on a single sector have less diverse economies, which can lead to a number of issues (especially if the price of a particular resource drops).
Additionally, resource rich countries tend to have unstable governments, which makes it difficult to diversify and grow ...
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I recommend Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, for this topic. I don't know what you mean by "the society." Diamond makes it clear that there are many different societies around the world, progressing at different rates. To answer your question about why we have what we have today and why individual societies developed in the direction they did: some ...
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The following researchers have written a number of papers and books on this topic:
Doran Acemoglu
James Robinson
You may want to read their papers for a good start.
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