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''The Elusive Quest For Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics'' is a 2001 book by World Bank development economist William Easterly. Upon its release, the book received acclaim from such figures as Bruce Bartlett, Robert Solow, and Paul Romer, and has since become widely cited in the Economic Development literature. Easterly’s primary thesis is that the numerous efforts to remedy extreme poverty in the Third World have failed because they have neglected that individuals, businesses, governments, and donors respond to incentives. Thus, he argues, the failure of economic development in poor tropical nations is not the failure of economics, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work. Inspired by the moral imperative to improve the lives of the poor, his recommendation is not to abandon the quest, but to improve the institutions of governments and international actors to create incentives that promote growth.〔Easterly, William, ''The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics'', MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001, p.xiii〕 ==Panaceas that failed== The first section of the book is dedicated to the various Post-WWII efforts to promote economic growth among impoverished tropical nations. Early efforts to promote investment and capital accumulation were based on the Harrod-Domar Model, the Lewis Model, and Rostow's stages of growth, which proposed that GDP growth would always be proportional to the share of investment in GDP, and that capital accumulation was the critical factor for growth. These models justified huge amounts of aid from Western governments and intergovernmental organizations, to fill the “finance gap” between domestic savings and required investment. Easterly, however, demonstrates that most aid did not go into investment in the years 1965-1995, and finds no statistical association between investment and growth. As Robert Solow discovered in the late 1950s, it is not just investment in machines but investment in ever-improving machinery—technological progress—that improves worker productivity in the long-run. Easterly also discusses the failed efforts of states to use education, family planning, and debt forgiveness as means to grow out of poverty. He notes that there is little incentive for a student in a poor country to value and invest in her own education if there is no future return for that investment. In more corrupt countries the very skilled opt to apply themselves to lobbying the government and other activities that redistribute income rather than activities that create new value. For education to provide a return on the investment, the society must have well-functioning institutions and markets that foster a demand for skilled individuals. Easterly also highlights the problematic nature of structural adjustment loan programs—aid given under certain conditions—which became very popular in the 1980s. Rather than initiating true economic reform, states only pretended to adjust their policies. Because shortfalls would elicit increased loans and donors demonstrated little interest in revoking aid, there was little incentive for states to improve their policies. Debt forgiveness regimes produced the same moral hazard, as authoritarian governments considered forgiveness as a free pass to continue to steal from their peoples’ futures. Easterly suggests that aid should be tied to prior achievement rather than promises of political leaders, and that aid should increase with further improvement (similar to the incentive structure of the Earned Income Tax Credit).〔Easterly, ''The Elusive Quest for Growth'', p.21-140〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Elusive Quest for Growth」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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