OVERVIEWThe world of development practice only gets more complex. The diversity of country experiences—from completely failed states like Somalia to the emerging African economies to the economically thriving but chaotic South Asia states to middle income but stagnating Latin America—gets broader. At the same time the evolution of development paradigms never seems to catch up to the pressing challenges of the here and now.
This five day course is meant to provide an overview of what is at the cutting edge of development thinking and research on a number (though not all topics) and how that can be incorporated into the strategic and tactical decisions of higher level managers of development institutions. Topics include Growth Diagnostics; Effective and Accountable Public Action; Structural Transformation and Promoting Economic Capability; Real-Time Learning, Projects as Knowledge Creation.
Program Objectives
In this course participants will learn to:
- Develop a framework for “growth diagnostics”—that is, a strategy for figuring out policy priorities. The strategy will seek to identify the most binding constraints on economic activity, and then work out a set of policies that, once targeted on these constraints at any point in time, is likely to provide the biggest bang for the reform buck.
- Identify specific market failures (including market failures that result from government interventions) and assess the policy responses & failures.
- Take a “process” view of growth—to identify and mitigate the key constraints to growth for developing economies. The problem is less about getting growth started than removing obstacle after obstacle from its path.
Please see the Curriculum page for details on topics discussed each day.