The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Grove Art)

by Paul Collier

Firms hate competition because it forces them into painful changes, and painful change is what generates productivity growth.

Why do the governments of the bottom billion typically adopt high trade barriers? Partly because they are one of the key sources of corruption.

Madagascar, to become a customs officer you have to go to the school that trains them. So getting into the school is a passport to prosperity. The bribe to get a place is fifty times the country’s per capita annual income.

the whole of sub-Saharan Africa has an economy about the size of Belgium’s.

Remember that aid is a two-edged sword as far as exporting is concerned because of the Dutch disease it generates. The solution to this is a big push: large but temporary aid targeted on raising export infrastructure

Without effective temporary protection against the Asian giants, the countries of the bottom billion will not break into new global markets.

A head of government should not be leading an aid campaign; rather, he or she should be forcing policy coordination across the government.

Millennium Development Goals

have two weaknesses, both involving a lack of focus. The first critical lack of focus is that the MDGs track the progress of five billion of the six billion people on our planet.

Many of them do not want to believe that for the majority of the developing world global capitalism is working.

The other critical lack of focus is on strategies to achieve the goals. Growth is not a cure-all, but the lack of growth is a kill-all.

The countries of the bottom billion are not there to pioneer experiments in socialism; they need to be helped along the already trodden path of building market economies.

The right needs to move on from the notion of aid as part of the problem—

face up to the fact that these countries are stuck,