1975: Volume 7
Volume 7 Number 2 May 1975
Edited by: Dudley Seers
It is by now generally agreed that economic growth is by no means a sufficient condition for ending the unholy trinity of unemployment, inequality and poverty. In recent years, as readers of the IDS Annual Reports will know, a great deal of work has been done at the Institute on the theoretical and practical problems of egalitarian, poverty-oriented, development strategies. IDS economists who had taken part in the ILO Employment missions to Colombia, Sri Lanka and Kenya had been feeling the need to explore the technical possibilities of incorporating distributional objectives in growth models, and quantifying policy options. Starting from a slightly different position, several staff economists of the World Bank had become aware of the same need.
Volume 7 Number 1 January 1975
Edited by: Dudley Seers
Amongst the central questions being discussed at IDS is 'dependence'. This used to be thought of mainly in economic terms. One reason for this was the realization in former colonies that political independence had a limited significance so long as the economy was tied closely to that of the former colonial power and other industrial countries. The emphasis on economic factors was reinforced by the dominance of economics within the social sciences, due (apparently) to an analytical framework which permitted extensive quantification of variables and their elaborate manipulation. Another influence was the Marxist theory that the economic base of a society determines other phenomena, which form the 'super-structure'.'
1974: Volume 6
Volume 6 Number 4 October 1974
Edited by: Robin Murray
This bulletin is devoted to the work of the International Problem Area Group (INTERPAG), and is the last of four such bulletins reporting on problem area group research. The first three articles cover the group's work on trade. The first, by Hans Singer, reports on the trade liberalization project which has been centred at IDS and whose first report argued the benefits of increasing trade between developed and under-developed countries. The second article, by Percy Selwyn, is a critique of this approach, principally for practical reasons. The third, by David Evans, presents an alternative theoretical approach for analysing trade relations 'unequal exchange' - which questions among other things the orthodox theory on which proposals for trade liberalization are based.
Volume 6 Number 3 July 1974
Edited by: John Oxenham
Researchers in the Human Resources Problem Area Group (HUMPAG) at the Institute of Development Studies work on questions of improving the quality of life for people: population growth with its manifold implications, employment and self-employment, patterns of industrial organisation, the effects of new modes of production on older patterns of economic and social organization, manpower planning, the relationships between employment and schooling, the distribution of income, the distribution of social services such as health care. Most of this work is represented here and most of it is offered as preliminary reflections on research which has been completed only very recently.
This issue of the Bulletin can claim then to be narrowing - even if in a minor way - the lag between research and dissemination. It helps to soften the complaint of the urgent practitioners of 'development', that the insights of research too often come too late to be of use.
Volume 6 Number 2 May 1974
Edited by: Frank Ellis
The increase in the international price of oil from $2.70 per barrel in October 1973 to over $8.00 per barrel from January 1974 has most profound and widespread implications for world development in the rest of this decade. The additional revenue of the 11 major oil exporting countries has been estimated to exceed 1973 total revenue by some $65 billion in 1974. Of this, some $55 billion is estimated to come from developed countries and the remaining $10 billion from non-oil producing developing countries. Although such estimates obviously only give us the rough order of the size of financial transfers involved, there is a risk of becoming so pre-occupied with margins of error that the magnitude is missed. Indeed the magnitudes are so large that their significance may be missed without some comparative figures. Total net official development assistance from OECD countries was less than $9 billion in 1972. Total net flow of private overseas investment trom OECD countries to less developed countries was $9½ billion in 1972. Total exports (including oil) from all less developed countries were only $74 billion in 1972. Thus the increase in export earnings of the oil producing countries in one year alone is almost as great as total Third World export earnings (including oil) two years earlier. As a shift in world income distribution arising from an increase in the price of a single item of world trade, and taking effect in such a short space of time, it is difficult to think of any change of comparable magnitude and significance.
In this issue of the bulletin we explore the background and some of the main implications of this "watershed" in international relations; particularly the extent to which it will affect the development prospects of poor countries and the climate of trade between poor and rich in the next few years.
