Development economics : from the poverty to the wealth of nations / Yujiro Hayami.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [284]-306) and indexes.

1. A Theoretical Framework for Economic Development -- 2. A Comparative Perspective on Developing Economies -- 3. Population Growth and the Constraint of Natural Resources -- 4. Breaking the Resource Constraint -- 5. Capital Accumulation in Economic Development -- 6. Patterns and Sources of Technological Progress -- 7. Income Distribution and Environmental Problems -- 8. Market and State -- 9. The Role of Community in Economic Modernization -- 10. Tradition and Modernization: A Concluding Remark.

Development Economics addresses one major question: Why has a small set of countries achieved a high level of affluence while the majority remain poor and stagnant? Why, in turn, has the number of developing economies set on the track of closing their productivity gap with advanced economies been so limited?

One obvious factor underlying this global divergence is unevenness in the ability to adopt and develop advanced technology, due in large measure to the difficulty experienced by low-income economies in preparing appropriate institutions for borrowing advanced technology given their social and cultural constraints. The major task of this volume is to explore the nature of these binding constraints, with the aim of identifying the means to remove them.