The emperor has no growth: declining economic growth rates in the era of globalization

Have the policies advocated by the IMF, the World Bank, and the US Treasury Department helped to stimulate economic growth? Even among those who have been critical of globalisation and the most powerful institutions that promote it, the IMF and the World Bank, this belief goes largely unchallenged. This paper shows that there is no support for this assumption in the official data.

Contrary to popular opinion, the official data for the last two decades show that economic growth has slowed dramatically, especially in the less developed countries, as compared with the previous two decades. The paper recommends that the IMF and the World Bank should use their enormous capacity for research to try to find out what has gone wrong. Most importantly, they should not pretend that they have the necessary expertise nor the answers to the difficult and often country-specific problems of economic growth and development, for it is clear that they do not. They could play a much more constructive role by helping to cancel the crushing, unpayable debt of the poorer countries and allowing each nation to choose its own path to economic growth and development.

[Adapted from the author]