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Overview
"This book's main theme is that the neoliberal economic policies forced on developing countries by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank serve the interests of Western industrial countries more than those of developing countries, as the post-1980 Turkish experience illustrates. Within a simple dependency-oriented framework the book presents the effects of liberalization policies in Turkey. These policies were mostly concerned with allocative efficiency, disregarding distributional efficiency issues. The results were not always socially or politically desirable. These policies consistently favored capital over labor and created an economic system that made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Privatization, in the name of raising allocative efficiency, contributed to increasing inequality and poverty. Anti-inflationary policies, debt-reduction schemes, environmental policies, and agricultural reforms all favored the interests of high-income groups. Their benefits increasingly accrued to industrial countries, either by transferring surplus from the national metropolis to the international metropolis, or by restructuring the developing countries' output, input, and financial markets so that any exchange between developing and industrial countries would benefit the latter." Economic theory promoting economic liberalization (rooted in neoliberal economic theory) is based on the assumption that a free-market economy is superior to any other economic structure in that it almost automatically produces allocative efficiency and promotes growth and development. Free trade, privatization, and liberalization of input and output markets lead to this superior economic structure. Economic liberalization policies implemented under the auspices of the IMF/World Bank rest on these same assumptions. The mismatch between these assumptions and the realities of developing countries inevitably leads one to question the applicability of neoliberal policies to developing cSynopsis
Odekon (economics, Skidmore College) criticizes economic liberalization within a simple dependency-oriented framework, describing it as a process that serves the Western industrial nations' economic, financial, and political interests instead of bringing his native Turkey and other developing countries widespread, long-lasting economic growth and development. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Book Details
Published
October 1, 2005
Publisher
Lehigh University Press
Pages
169
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780934223751