EOnation: Dani Rodrik

["Jacquelyn Yates" <Yates@salem.kent.edu>]

Thanks to whoever made the suggestion to look at Dani Rodrik's work. I've just 
finished "Making Openness Work," and found it very helpful.  Rodrik's 
regression analyses of 30 years of World Bank Data suggest that the best 
strategy for economic growth is a national investment-friendly policy for 
domestic capital.  Liberal trade policies which allow for cheap imports of 
capital goods the country does not produce are also quite helpful.  Opening up 
to foreign investment in a way that makes the economy vulnerable to the ebbs 
and flows of international capital markets is not especially useful.  And 
finally, countries with participatory political institutions are able to adjust 
to the buffeting of worldwide economic storms much more swiftly and 
successfully than autocracies and dictatorships.  Countries with sharp  
inequalities of wealth and deep ethnic and religious divisions (which are often 
contained only by exercise of force inconceivable in a participatory system) 
generally don't have a good economic performance record.  Rodrik's work was a 
great eye-opener for this political scientist who is a neophyte reader in the 
world of economics.  His work meshes nicely with ours -- assisting in the 
creation of economically sound enterprises that respect human dignity and 
attend to social equity.

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Jacquelyn Yates, Ph.D.                
Political Science                                   
Kent State University - Salem         
2491 S.R. 45 South     
Salem, OH 44460

yates@mail.salem.kent.edu
FAX  330-332-9256 
Tel. 330-337-4282



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