The often emotional debate over the impact of structural adjustment on the poor in Africa has been confused by the complexity of economic reforms and their inconsistent implementation, the diversity of prior conditions, and confounding effects of external shocks. Professors Sahn, Dorosh, and Younger isolate from other factors the effect of specific policy measures associated with adjustment programs. The authors suggest that contrary to common belief, adjustment policies do not harm the poor in Africa. Reforms in fact usually benefit the poor slightly, but alone are insufficient to reduce poverty significantly.

Structural Adjustment Reconsidered: Economic Policy and Poverty in Africa

Business & Money

Sahn, David E.

Dorosh, Paul A.

Younger, Stephen D.

Economics

Cambridge University Press

<p>The often emotional debate over the impact of structural adjustment on the poor in Africa has been confused by the complexity of economic reforms and their inconsistent implementation, the diversity of prior conditions, and confounding effects of external shocks. Professors Sahn, Dorosh, and Younger isolate from other factors the effect of specific policy measures associated with adjustment programs. The authors suggest that contrary to common belief, adjustment policies do not harm the poor in Africa. Reforms in fact usually benefit the poor slightly, but alone are insufficient to reduce poverty significantly.</p>

In this timely volume sixteen specialists examine the external and domestic factors that precipitated Africa's economic crisis and the nature and consequences of the process of reform designed to restore macroeconomic stability and accelerate the rate of economic growth. The authors explore the efforts of ten diverse countries in sub-Saharan Africa to rectify economic distortions of the past and weaknesses in institutional structures. Their case studies include Ghana, Guinea, Zaire, Cameroon, Niger, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Gambia, and Madagascar.

Adjusting to Policy Failure in African Economies (Food Systems and Agrarian Change)

Cornell University Press

In recent years, the Republic of Guinea has shed its reputation as one of the most tightly controlled state economies in Africa, leaving behind a cloistered era marked by an extraordinarily closed economic and political system. In breaking with its dismal past, Guinea has launched an ambitious program of reform which has affected the entire range of the country's institutions, regulations, and markets.  Culling data from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and numerous interviews and previously unpublished government data, Jehan Arulpragasam and David E. Sahn here present an overview of the Guinean economy, and its evolution—from independence, through crisis, to reform—and model implications of these changes for economic performance and living standards of the poor. Highlighting the chasm between theory and practice, between well-intentioned program and problematic implementation, the authors reveal how Guinea both parallels and contradicts past experiences of economic reform in Africa. Most notably, reform in Guinea has been hindered by the weighty administrative, managerial, and logistical demands of undertaking a vast battery of economic adjustments, all in one fell swoop.  The most detailed and informative study of the Guinean economy to date, Economic Transition in Guinea illustrates not only the successes of the nation's reform agenda, but also the fundamental constraints to development that often lie beyond the reach of such reform.

Economic Transition in Guinea (Cornell Food and Nutrition, 1)

NYU Press

The adverse nutrition effects of taxing export crops in Malawi (Working paper)

Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program

Methods for the Evaluation of the Impact of Food and Nutrition Programmes (FOOD AND NUTRITION BULLETIN SUPPLEMENT, NO 8)

Politics & Social Sciences

Lockwood, Richard

Social Sciences

United Nations Univ

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