1st Edition

Manufacturing, Technology, and Economic Growth

By Carlos Sabillon Copyright 2000

    This book analyzes the development of economic events in Japan, China, the NICs, Russia, Germany, Britain, and the United States of America during the second half of the twentieth century in an effort to uncover the variables that were determinant for the generation of economic growth. After analyzing numerous economic and non-economic variables, the author manages to identify a common denominator that was always present when there was growth and absent when there was stagnation. A strong causality linkage is established between this common denominator and growth. The book also demonstrates how this common set of variables can be easily manipulated by government policy in order to deliver fast and sustained economic growth. The book concludes with a clear set of macroeconomic policies for the attainment of fast, non-inflationary growth in developing countries, middle-income nations, transition economies, and developed countries.

    Despite its unorthodox position, the book endorses free trade, privatization, liberalization, fiscal rectitude, low inflation, central bank independence, proper governance, protection of the environment, and better income distribution. With this approach, the book offers a fresh new look on the problem of growth and offers hope that economic science will finally provide governments with an effective policy tool for the elimination of poverty and unemployment.

    Based on in-depth ethnographic research - and using an approach that seeks to understand how migration is experienced by the migrants themselves - this is a fascinating study of the experiences of women in rural China who joined the vast migration to Beijing and other cities at the end of the twentieth century. It focuses on the experiences of rural-urban migrants, the particular ways in which they talk about those experiences, and how those experiences affect their sense of identity. Through first-hand accounts of actual migrant workers the author provides valuable insights into how rural women negotiate rural/urban experiences; how they respond to migration and life in the city; and how that experience shapes their world view, values, and relations with others. The book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the relationship between gender and social change, and of the ways in which globalization and modernity are experienced at the most personal level.

    Biography

    Carlos Sabilon