The state and its institutions are crucial for economic development: for better and for worse. This insight informs this important, up-to-date and authoritative survey of new trends in growth economics and the widely divergent economic performance of developing countries - for example, between Latin America and South-east Asia - which seemed to be similarly placed just a generation ago. The decisive role of the political dimension in economic growth seems clear but there are many challenges to be met in getting an analytical handle on the precise determinants and in testing empirically for this. This is the challenge taken up by the international team of contributors.

The interest of this book is that the aims of the IAE conference of 1958 can now be assessed in light of the development of the last 30 years. The book itself also looks at how the IAE has attempted to promote the development of economics internationally as an intellectual discipline.