Search results for ""Author Barry R. Weingast""
Harvard University, Asia Center Korean Political and Economic Development: Crisis, Security, and Institutional Rebalancing
How do poor nations become rich, industrialized, and democratic? And what role does democracy play in this transition? To address these questions, Jongryn Mo and Barry R. Weingast study South Korea’s remarkable transformation since 1960. The authors concentrate on three critical turning points: Park Chung Hee’s creation of the development state beginning in the early 1960s, democratization in 1987, and the genesis of and reaction to the 1997 economic crisis. At each turning point, Korea took a significant step toward creating an open access social order.The dynamics of this transition hinge on the inclusion of a wide array of citizens, rather than just a narrow elite, in economic and political activities and organizations. The political economy systems that followed each of the first two turning points lacked balance in the degree of political and economic openness and did not last. The Korean experience, therefore, suggests that a society lacking balance cannot sustain development. Korean Political and Economic Development offers a new view of how Korea was able to maintain a pro-development state with sustained growth by resolving repeated crises in favor of rebalancing and greater political and economic openness.
£31.46
Stanford University Press Political Institutions and Financial Development
Economists have long maintained that a well-developed and functioning financial system is a vital prerequisite to economic growth. Countries with robust banking sectors and securities markets—that is, countries in which credit cards, loans, mortgages, and the ability to issue stocks and bonds are available to a broad swath of consumers and businesses—are more prosperous than countries that restrict such access to a favored elite. What is less clear is why some countries develop better financial systems than others. The essays in this volume employ the insights and techniques of political science, economics, and history to provide a fresh answer to this question. While scholarly tradition points to the colonial origin of a country’s legal system as the most important determinant of the health of its financial system, this volume points instead to a country’s political institutions—its governmental structures and the rules of the political game—as the key. Specifically, the openness and competitiveness of a country’s political system tends to reflect itself in the openness and competitiveness of its financial system.
£30.60
