Globalisation has had a major impact on manufacturing competitiveness and industrial development in transitional and developing economies. This up-to-date book critically examines the experience of a wide range of countries, focusing on the policy challenges they face in the new global economy. The rising demand for manufactured goods is causing increased pressure on developing and transitional countries to introduce policies aimed at enhancing productivity, mobilising resources, building capabilities and changing internal structures. Yet policymakers face difficult trade-offs between allocative efficiency and sustainable development. This book begins by looking at key policy issues in manufacturing including international best practices, policy convergence and policy benchmarking. The discussion then moves on to discuss the measurement of manufacturing competitiveness and the policies necessary for companies to compete successfully in the new global economy. The policy recommendations are underpinned through a wide range of case studies from different regions and countries. The book offers policymakers, scholars and researchers a unique perspective, and serves as a comprehensive guide for formulating policies vital for national industrial development and integration into the world economy. It will help those concerned with policy formulation in developing and transitional countries take informed decisions and better cope with the challenges and opportunities of the global economy.

How should a country change its institutions to achieve social and economic development? This question cannot be answered from a purely economic view; instead, it must be understood within a wider perspective where institutional change requires affecting the whole political-economic system. To address these issues, in this book, we develop a simple model to explain how multiple institutional equilibria could arise in a small open economy, studying how the distribution of political power among four different kinds of agents (capitalists, skilled workers, unskilled workers and "grabbers," which are rent-seeking elites, endemic in many underdeveloped countries) could generate either a productive or a rent-seeking equilibrium. As the distribution of political power in a society is so crucial to understanding institutional equilibria, the second part of the book is dedicated to apply the concept of networks to explain this distribution. For that, a game theoretic model is formulated in which both the occurrence and success of an uprising by the citizens against a dictator depend on the characteristics of the communication network that connects the citizens.

In the last ten to fifteen years, the Latin American and Caribbean region has undergone the most significant transformation of economic policy since World War II. Through a series of structural reforms, an increasing number of countries have moved from closed, state-dominated economies to ones that are more market oriented and open to the rest of the world. Policymakers expected that these changes, in conjunction with lower rates of inflation and increased spending in the social area, would speed up economic growth, increase productivity, and lead to the creation of more jobs and greater equality. Have those expectations been fulfilled? Analyzing the impact of the reforms in nine countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru), this study provides a detailed picture of progress to date. At the overall regional level, the book suggests, the reforms have had a surprisingly small impact: a small positive impact on investment and growth, and a small negative impact on employment and income distribution. But at the country, sectoral, and microeconomic levels, it finds evidence of strong effects, with some units doing very well and others falling behind.