Economic Development and Transition: Thought, Strategy, and Viability

In Economic Development and Transition, renowned development economist Justin Yifu Lin argues that economic performance in developing countries depends largely on government strategy. If the government plays a facilitating role, enabling firms to exploit the economy's comparative advantages, its economy will develop successfully. However, governments in most developing countries attempt to promote industries that go against their comparative advantages by creating various kinds of distortion to protect nonviable firms in priority industries. Failing to recognize the original intention of many distortions, most governments in transition economies attempt to eliminate those distortions without addressing firms' viability problems, causing economic performance to deteriorate in their transition process. Governments in successful transition economies adopt a pragmatic dual-track approach that encourages firms to enter sectors that were suppressed previously and gives necessary support to firms in priority industries before their viability issue is addressed.

Justin Yifu Lin is Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He obtained his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1986 and returned to China in 1987, the first PhD in social sciences to return from abroad after China started economic reform in 1979. He was the founding director of China Center for Economic Research at Peking University from 1994 to 2008 and is the author of sixteen books, including The China Miracle (1996) and State-Owned Enterprise Reform in China (2001).