The Growth Report : Strategies for Sustained Growth and Inclusive Development

The report has four main parts. In the
first, the commission reviews the 13 economies that have
sustained, high growth in the postwar period. Their growth
models had some common flavors: the strategic integration
with the world economy; the mobility of resources,
particularly labor; the high savings and investment rates;
and a capable government committed to growth. The report
goes on to describe the cast of mind and techniques of
policy making that leaders will need if they are to emulate
such a growth model. It concludes that their policy making
will need to be patient, pragmatic, and experimental. In the
second part, the commission lays out the ingredients a
growth strategy might include. These range from public
investment and exchange rate policies to land sales and
redistribution. A list of ingredients is not enough to make
a dish, of course, as Bob Solow, a Nobel Prize-winning
economist and a member of the Commission, points out. The
commission, however, refrains from offering policy makers a
recipe, or growth strategy, to follow. This is because no
single recipe exists. Timing and circumstance will determine
how the ingredients should be combined, in what quantities,
and in what sequence. Formulating a full growth strategy,
then, is not a job for this Commission but for a dedicated
team of policy makers and economists, working on a single
economy over time. Instead of a country-specific recipe, the
commission offers some more general thoughts on the
opportunities and constraints faced by nations in
Sub-Saharan Africa, countries rich in resources, small
states with fewer than 2 million people, and middle-income
countries that have lost their economic momentum. In the
final part of the report, the commission discusses global
trends that are beyond the control of any single
developing-country policy maker. Global warming is one
example; the surge in protectionist sentiment another; the
rise of commodity prices a third. In addition, the
commission discusses the aging of the world population and
the potential dangers of America's external deficit.
These trends are new enough that the 13 high-growth
economies of the postwar period did not have to face them.
The question is whether they now make it impossible for
other countries to emulate that postwar success.