Cover art for Gambling on Development
Published
Hurst Publishers, August 2023
ISBN
9781805260080
Format
Softcover, 360 pages
Dimensions
21.6cm × 13.8cm

Gambling on Development Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose

1 IN STOCK
Ships Monday 20th!
Fast $7.95 flat-rate shipping!
Only pay $7.95 per order within Australia, including end-to-end parcel tracking.
100% encrypted and secure
We adhere to industry best practice and never store credit card details.
Talk to real people
Contact us seven days a week – our staff are here to help.

Weaving together conversations with prime ministers, civil servants and ordinary people, this is a probing look at how development has been achieved across the world, and how to assist such successes.

In the last thirty years, the developing world has undergone tremendous changes. Overall, poverty has fallen, people live longer and healthier lives, and economies have been transformed. And yet many countries have simply missed the boat. Why have some countries prospered, while others have failed?

Stefan Dercon argues that the answer lies not in a specific set of policies, but rather in a key 'development bargain', whereby a country's elites shift from protecting their own positions to gambling on a growth-based future. Despite the imperfections of such bargains, China is among the most striking recent success stories, along with Indonesia and more unlikely places, such as Bangladesh, Ghana and Ethiopia. Gambling on Development is about these winning efforts, in contrast to countries stuck in elite bargains leading nowhere.

Building on three decades' experience across forty-odd countries, Dercon winds his narrative through Ebola in Sierra Leone, scandals in Malawi, beer factories in the DRC, mobile phone licences in Mozambique, and relief programmes behind enemy lines in South Sudan.

'[An] urgent and important book.' - Financial Times

'A brilliant, well written and important book. Thoroughly recommended.' - LSE Review of Books

Related books