Author Description

Written by a former World Bank economist, How Does My Country Grow? presents growth policy lessons from the author's first-hand experience in Poland, Kenya, India, and Russia. The book argues that country economic analysis is in effect a separate, integrative branch of economics. It covers the period 1990-2008 and documents lessons from two episodes: the historic transition in Central and Eastern Europe, which began in 1990; and the unexpectedly positive response of emerging markets to their own crises of 1997-2001, which enabled them to weather the global financial crisis of 2008-09 virtually unscathed. The emerging market response to the crises in the shape of comprehensive self-insurance with its implication of self-financed growth, topics to which the author contributed at the World Bank, are covered in the final part of the book. While the discussion is tilted towards developing countries, the insights are applicable to the advanced economies, many of which today are in the throes of their own growth-cum-sovereign debt crises.