Essays
2023 Talk for Namibian senior civil servants on 2 November 2023
- revisited essay from January 2022
2022
January Talk for Namibian senior civil servants
- revisited essay from February 2021
2021
March Is China's economic development policy home-grown?
April What is eonomics?
Essay 2023
Talk for Namibian senior civil servants on November 2023
What is this talk about
To start of I will tell you about the evolution of the world’s countries in terms of income per head over a period of 35 year, followed by a brief overview of the changing global geopolitical situation, and what the economic consequences would be for the world at large and for sub Saharan Africa in particular. Subsequently I will share with you my views on what factors make countries grow and prosper – I will argue that the main factor is productivity.
Mauritius and Botswana are Africa’s economic star performers. I will deal with the question what factors explain their respective success and, based on this, I hope to draw - together with you – a few suggestions that may further productivity growth of Namibia’s economic sectors.
Marein will send you the full text of my lecture which also includes a column I wrote about productivity growth some time ago.
Essay January 2022
Talk for Namibian senior civil servants
Development economics’ central question is: what factors promote or hinder economic growth?
The problem is that we don’t have the one and only answer - there are various possible ones.
Regarding economic development theories, there are not just one but three generations of development economists. The third generation even includes different schools of thought on the matter, ranging from the institutional, via the geographical to the historical school of development.
I have dealt with them in some detail in my book Whatever Happened to the Third World? I will start my talk by telling you why, over the past forty years, the Third World as one bloc fell apart and evolved into three different groups of countries.
_JPG.jpg)
Essay March 2021
Is China’s economic development policy home-grown?
The short answer is that it isn’t. Before explaining why, I recount my first visit to China that took place in August 1985.
The Chinese government had invited three European NGOs: Oxfam, Deutsche Welthunger Hilfe, and Novib (a Dutch NGO which I represented), to visit fourteen locations in so-called autonomous regions to appraise projects that needed financial and technical support.
The mission had been suggested by UNDP’s Resident Representative at the time. After having received an extensive briefing of UNDPs Resident Representative in Beijing, the mission started off in Guangxi, located in China’s South East. Subsequently the mission visited Hunan (Mao’s province of birth), Henan, and Hubei. A variety of proposed projects, ranging from cattle and fish rearing to furniture production were shown to us. What struck me was that our Chinese interlocutors did not have a clue about cost - and sales prices, nor of profit and loss.
During the time of our 1985 mission, the market apparently played no role in the places we visited.
Essay April 2021
What is economics?
Inspired by technological innovation, economic development first triggered more leisure time, then affluence and, more recently,
the Digital Revolution. Three economists, John Maynard Keynes, Tibor Scitovsky and Noreena Hertz, analysed their respective society’s challenges and opportunities. It seemed as if Keynes and Scitovsky went beyond the boundaries of the economic science, or didn’t they?
Almost a century ago celebrated British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) wrote a remarkable little essay entitled: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. Remarkable, not so much as Keynes himself did not have children, but for the attractive possibilities he sketched for future generations. He foresaw a society which would be a paradise of abundance, leisure, beauty, grace, and variety, in which love of money would come to be regarded as a mental disease. This would be made possible thanks to the economy’s rapid increase in productivity providing the possibilities for future generations to work less and enjoy life more.
