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This paper offers an analytical framework for understanding the evolution of India’s software industry and its place in the broader economy. It then considers how well the framework helps to answer three questions: i) What difference has the IT sector made to aggregate economic performance, at national and at state level? ii) What has been the impact of IT-sector growth on income distribution and on poverty? iii) What policy or other measures might enhance the benefits of the sector’s growth to ordinary Indians? ...

Rural areas of the developing world are the last frontier of the information technology revolution. Telephone and internet penetration there remains a small fraction of what it is in the developed world. Limited means of electronic communication with the outside world are just one source of isolation of rural communities and economies from the forces of national and global integration, albeit an important one. Without roads and electricity, the benefits of extending ICT access would be greatly diminished. Conversely, where these other elements of infrastructure are in place, those benefits can be multiplied. The costs of ICT provision to rural areas tend to be higher than to more densely populated urban areas, and the ability to pay of potential subscribers lower. In recent years, a number of interesting experiments has been initiated to extend low-cost telephone and, in some cases, internet access to low-income rural communities. This paper reviews some of these, with a particular ...

China’s climate policy over the coming decades will be crucial to efforts to slow global warming. While CO2 emissions growth slowed in the 1990s, it is too early to know if this represents the beginning of a long-term downward trend in the carbon intensity of China’s economy.Climate policymaking needs to consider the full range of economic costs and benefits of slowing greenhouse gas emissions growth. Like other developing countries, China’s medium-term preoccupation is with ensuring poverty-reducing economic growth, so climate policy must be both effective and consistent with this developmental goal.This study of health and agricultural productivity effects of a carbon tax shows that there is considerable scope for slowing emissions growth without diminishing economic welfare. The health benefits of reduced local pollution are significant, and the welfare gains from improved agricultural productivity are almost as large. When both health and agricultural benefits of a carbon tax ...

E-commerce policy priorities evolve with a country’s transition through phases of “e-commerce readiness”. For most developing countries, getting the basic telecommunications infrastructure, competitive environment, and regulatory framework in place to support widespread and affordable Internet access remains the highest priority. Telecoms privatisation needs to be accompanied by expanded competition, not excessively generous exclusivity agreements. In important middle-income developing countries, governments must address a further challenge: ensuring an e-commerceconducive business environment. Some issues, like consumer protection, are familiar even if cross-jurisdictional, remote and anonymous transactions in a virtual environment complicate dispute resolution. Other issues are unique to or especially acute in a virtual environment, like protection of privacy, security of transactions, and authentication of electronic signatures. The OECD has devised a number of guidelines ...

In recent years, as China’s reform of state–owned enterprises (SOEs) has gathered momentum, the number of workers made redundant has been rising. Until now, the dismissals have affected only a fraction of the “surplus labour”, which has been estimated at 20–25 per cent of total industrial employment in SOEs. If concerns for social stability have so far dictated a gradual approach to SOE restructuring, the heavy fiscal and financial burden of loss–making SOEs has forced an acceleration of the process. Thus, far more sizeable layoffs from state enterprises could be expected in coming years.The growth of the non–state sector has opened new job opportunities for some SOE laid–off workers. By easing the re–employment of redundant workers, a further development of the non–state sector is an important condition for a smooth restructuring of the state sector. Measures to promote further development of the non–state sector include removing remaining discrimination against the private ...

Apart from size of population and GDP, China and Viet Nam have a good deal in common. Both are economies in transition from socialist central planning to the market. Both were largely agrarian societies on the eve of their reforms and, in both, unleashing the productive forces of agriculture was an important early reform result. Indeed, a rapid improvement in rural living standards is among the outstanding achievements of both countries.In the case of industrial development, the differences in their post-reform experience are more striking than the similarities. In both countries, industry has grown rapidly since reforms, much more rapidly on average than agriculture. Yet, the motor force of industrial growth has been different in the two countries. In China, rural township and village enterprises (TVEs) — first collectively and more recently privately owned — have led industrial growth, with state enterprises lagging far behind. In Viet Nam, growth has been comparable in state ...

This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment. Through a contrast of the experiences of two regional groupings of countries — East Asia and Eastern Europe — that have both experienced rapid industrialisation, it makes clear the importance of sound economic policy in encouraging efficient resource use. At the same, by contrasting the experiences of different East Asian countries, it demonstrates that economic policy is not sufficient. In the absence of reinforcing and enforceable environmental policies, rapid urban and industrial growth can cause severe environmental degradation.The paper addresses indirectly the question: what are the costs and benefits of delaying environmental expenditures until late in the development process as some of the high performing East Asian economies have done? It finds that those countries which invested early in environmental improvements experienced virtually no tradeoff in ...