Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich? How are wealth and poverty related to changes in nutrition, health, life expectancy, education, population growth and politics? This modern, non-technical 2005 introduction to development studies explores the dynamics of socio-economic development and stagnation in developing countries. Taking a quantitative and comparative approach to contemporary debates within their broader context, Szirmai examines historical, institutional, demographic, sociological, political and cultural factors. Key chapters focus on economic growth, technological change, industrialisation, agricultural development, and consider social dimensions such as population growth, health and education. Each chapter contains comparative statistics on trends from a sample of twenty-nine developing countries. This rich statistical database allows students to strengthen their understanding of comparative development experiences. Assuming no prior knowledge of economics the book is suited for use in inter-disciplinary development studies programmes as well as economics courses, and will also interest practitioners pursuing careers in developing countries.

Barnett presents the first in-depth analysis in English of the pioneer of long cycle analysis, N.D. Kondratiev (1892-1938), who was a key policy adviser to the Soviet government in the early part of the 1920s. Kondratiev developed a market-led industrialization strategy for the USSR, in direct opposition to Stalin's centrally-planned industrialization programme, and was the director of the Conjuncture Institute, a centre for the study of business cycles and forecasting between 1920 and 1928. It was within the Conjuncture Institute that Kondratiev developed his analysis of long cycles. Barnett covers all aspects of Kondratiev's work.

Taking a comparative and multidisciplinary approach, this textbook offers a non-technical introduction to the dynamics of socio-economic development and stagnation.

The theory of economic development is a branch of economic dynamics. Any discussion of the theory must involve dynamics even though not all dynamic problems are necessarily related to economic development. The theory's primary locus is upon the nice paths of economic variables. Stationary states, which have been the main concern of modem economic development theory, are actually special cases of economic dynamics. In this study, we propose an economic development theory within the framework of input-output systems and neoclassical economics. No political problems will be dealt with, although this does not mean that questions such as why Japan had a higher growth rate than China in the past are not important. Similarly, rather than dealing with the psychological and institutional aspects of in economic development processes we only suggest ways (or methods, as Hicks would call them) for analyzing what determines economic development from the point of view of "pure" economics. Our main contribution to economic growth theory is that we investigate various nonlinear dynamic phenomena such as bifurcations and economic cycles. We emphasize that oscillations and structural changes are not rare but universal in a progressive economy. No economic system can be stabilized forever if change is permitted.

V. 1. An introduction to dynamical systems and market mechanisms -- v. 2. An introduction to macroeconomics dynamics.

Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich? How are wealth and poverty related to changes in nutrition, health, life expectancy, education, population growth and politics? This modern, non-technical introduction to development economics takes a quantitative and comparative approach to contemporary debates, examining historical, institutional, demographic, sociological, political, cultural and ecological factors. Chapters contain comparative statistics from twenty-nine developing countries and assume no prior knowledge of economics.

DYNAMIC ECONOMICS with increasing returns is extended to cope with economic growth, the business cycles and the irregular swings in the long-term development as different aspects of the same dynamical system, the economic system "as a whole". HUMAN CAPITAL emerges as the seminal concept: economic growth is in this dynamics causally reduced to the growth of human capital and thus to the growth of exact scientific knowledge. An analysis of this knowledge shows that quality education in hard sciences must be a prime target of future economic policies. A CAUSAL STRUCTURE, new in economics, underlies the extended dynamics. To enable students to study and to improve it, a detailled introduction to nonlinear causality is given, emphasizing the points relevant to this causal structure. NATIONAL ACCOUNTING and input-output dynamics are suggested to be extended to include also the production prices and production of human capital and of human time, by using a method of calculation indicated in detail in the book.

This book explains how changing technology and economizing behaviour induce vast changes in productivity, resource allocation, labour utilization, and patterns of living. Economic growth is seen as a process by which businesses, regimes, countries, and the whole world pass through distinct epochs, each one emerging from its predecessor, each one creating the conditions for its successor. Viewed from a long-run perspective, growth must be characterized as an explosive process, marked by turbulent transitions in social and political life as societies adapt to new opportunities, the demise of old ways of living, and to the vast increase and redistribution of human populations. The book is based on a synthesis of classical economics and contemporary concepts of adaptation and economic evolution. Although it is based on analytical methods, the text has been stripped of all equations and with few exceptions is devoid of technical jargon.

A multi-disciplinary team of authors analyze the economics of Brazilian deforestation using a large data set of ecological and economic variables. They survey the most up to date work in this field and present their own dynamic and spatial econometric analysis based on municipality level panel data spanning the entire Brazilian Amazon from 1970 to 1996. By observing the dynamics of land use change over such a long period the team is able to provide quantitative estimates of the long-run economic costs and benefits of both land clearing and government policies such as road building. The authors find that some government policies, such as road paving in already highly settled areas, are beneficial both for economic development and for the preservation of forest, while other policies, such as the construction of unpaved roads through virgin areas, stimulate wasteful land uses to the detriment of both economic growth and forest cover.