Virtuous and vicious cycles and lopsided development
The existence of two chains linking HD and EG is thus strongly supported both by our framework, drawing on micro and macro studies in the literature, and by our own empirical results. This means that an economy may be on a mutually reinforcing upward spiral, with high levels of HD leading to high EG and high EG, in turn, further promoting HD. Conversely, weak HD may result in low EG and consequently, poor progress towards HD improvement. The strength of the links in the two chains influences the extent of mutual reinforcement between HD and EG in either direction, i.e., positively or negatively.
Consequently, country performance can be usefully classified into four categories, virtuous, vicious and two types of lopsidedness, i.e., lopsided with relatively strong HD/weak EG (called ‘HD-lop- sided’) and lopsided with relatively weak HD/strong EG (‘EG-lopsided’). In the virtuous cycle case, good HD enhances EG, which, in turn, promotes HD, and so on. In the vicious cycle case, poor performance on HD tends to lead to poor EG performance, which in turn depresses HD achievements, and so on. The stronger the linkages in the two chains described above, the more pronounced the cycle of EG and HD, in either a positive or negative direction.
Where some linkages are weak, cases of lopsided development may occur. On the one hand, good EG may not bring about large improvements in HD if, for example, there are weak linkages, such as a low social allocation ratio; on the other hand, good HD performance may not generate good EG if there is a dearth of complementary resources because of low investment rates. Such cases of lopsided development are unlikely to persist. Either the weak partner in the cycle eventually acts as a brake on the other partner, leading to a vicious cycle case; or, if the linkages are strengthened, possibly by policy change, a virtuous cycle may result.
One way of classifying countries into the four categories was to compare their performance on
HD and EG (1960-2001) with the average performance of all developing countries (see figure 2). The vertical and horizontal grid lines represent the average performance for all developing countries for the period, with countries weighted by their populations in 2001. Most developing countries appear as either virtuous (NE quadrant), or vicious (SW quadrant); a significant number show an HD-lopsided pattern, and only one an EG-lopsided one. A strong regional pattern emerges, with East Asia heavily represented in the virtuous cycle quadrant. The majority of countries in the vicious cycle quadrant are from sub-Saharan Africa, and there are a significant number from Latin America. Latin America is also strongly represented in the HD-lopsided quadrant, the one EG-lopsided country being from Africa.
The important issue for policy purposes, of course, is how a country may move towards the virtuous cycle. Much can be learned about this by looking at the ways in which countries changed their location over time (table 3). Examining the movements of countries over the four decades between 1960 and 2001, we find that only two countries remained in the virtuous category throughout—the Republic of Korea and Singapore, which had highly successfully social and economic policies over the whole forty-year period. These countries combined a strong state, committed to advancing HD, with intelligent economic interventions, making good use of market forces. Four countries succeeded in moving from the HD-lopsided to the virtuous category—China from the 1960s to the 1970s; Viet Nam from the 1980s to the 1990s; Malaysia from the 1980s to the 1990s; and Chile from the 1980s to the 1990s. In the case of China and Viet Nam, the communist regimes had placed great emphasis on HD, resulting in HD-lopsided performance. In both countries, economic growth accelerated following economic reforms and a virtuous cycle was obtained. Malaysia had a virtuous performance in the 1960s, lapsed in the 1970s and then resumed good growth and HD in the 1980s and 1990s. High social expenditures explain the good HD performance, while economic growth was supported by a high investment rate. Chile suffered from depressed growth in the 1970s and 1980s as the Pinochet regime introduced very tough stabilization policies and radical economic reforms, but in the 1990s economic growth resumed.
Other countries moved from the virtuous category into the HD-lopsided category, often in response to particular short-term economic difficulties, such as the debt crisis of the 1980s, which affected many of the Latin American countries, and the 1997 East Asian financial crisis. The impact of the adjustment and debt crisis is shown, for example, in Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Uruguay, all of which moved from the virtuous quadrant to the HD-lopsided be- tween the 1970s and the 1980s. The negative impact on economic growth of the East Asian crisis is shown by Thailand’s fall from a virtuous cycle to HD-lopsided between the 1980s and 1990s. Indonesia started as a virtuous case (the 1960s), then had two decades of EG-lopsidedness and ended in the vicious cycle category owing to the impact of the financial crisis and political instability.
There was a strong tendency for countries in the vicious cycle to remain there. Altogether, twelve countries stayed in the vicious cycle throughout the four decades—nine from Africa, two (Bangladesh and Nepal) from Asia, as well as Bolivia in Latin America; only six exited, five into the HD-lopsided category (one only temporarily), and one into the EG-lopsided cagtegory. Almost all the countries leaving the vicious category had suffered civil wars which had ended or lessened in impact—e.g., El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea and the Sudan.
Lopsidedness, as expected, proved generally unstable. As noted, some countries succeeded in moving from the HD-lopsided category into the virtuous category. Just two countries remained in the HD-lopsided category throughout—Kuwait and Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), both countries which could sustain HD with large expenditures financed by oil revenues. No country remained in the EG-lop- sided category. EG-lopsided countries almost invariably fell into the vicious category. This was a pattern followed by sixteen countries, many of them in Africa, which succeeded in first achieving relatively high economic growth despite poor HD for a period following independence, after which growth lapsed. No country succeeded in moving from EG-lopsided to virtuous.
These findings clearly have some strong implications for policy sequencing. They show the need for balance in promoting HD and EG because it is very difficult to sustain one without the other—indeed, it seems to be impossible in the case of EG. Moreover, of greatest importance, the findings imply that it is not possible to reach the ideal of a virtuous cycle by first generating improved EG while neglecting HD, since any EG attained in this way will not be sustained.
Conclusions and policy implications
Our investigation into the determinants of HD progress and EG has clearly demonstrated the importance of the two-way relationship between them. The empirical work confirmed the significance of a number of links in the two chains—including income distribution, the social expenditure ratio and female education in Chain A, and the investment ratio in Chain B, in addition to the important inputs of EG and HD, respectively. Moreover, we have found that, even in the presence of some weak links in a chain, it is possible to achieve good progress by particularly strong performance in other links.
However, our most important conclusion concerns sequencing. Because of the strong two-way relationship between EG and HD, one has to promote both to sustain progress in either. Economic growth, which is an important input into HD improvement, is itself not sustainable without improvement in HD. The investigation of country changes over time has strong implications for the phasing of policies. Economic policy has tended to focus priority on getting the economic fundamentals ‘right’ as a necessary precondition for economic growth, arguing that HD improvement must await such economic growth—as in the classic ‘Washington Consensus’, for example. In sharp contrast, our findings contradict the view that HD improvement may be postponed until economic resource expansion makes it affordable. If HD improvement is postponed in this way, EG itself will not be sustained.
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