The bottom billion
Subtitle: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it
By: Paul Collier
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Oxford
Language: eng
Number of pages: 209
ISBN-13: 9780195374636; 9780195373387
Subjects: Poor; International cooperation; Political culture; Economic development projects; Poverty
Description: "In this elegant and impassioned synthesis from one of the world's leading experts on Africa and poverty, economist Paul Collier writes persuasively that although nearly five billion of the world's people are beginning to climb from desperate poverty and to benefit from globalization's reach to developing countries, there is a "bottom billion" of the world's poor whose countries, largely immune to the forces of global economy, are falling farther behind and are in danger of falling apart, separating permanently and tragically from the rest of the world. Collier identifies and explains the four traps that prevent the homelands of the world's billion poorest people from growing and receiving the benefits of globalization - civil war, the discovery and export of natural resources in otherwise unstable economies, being landlocked and therefore unable to participate in the global economy without great cost, and finally, ineffective governance. As he demonstrates that these billion people are quite likely in danger of being irretrievably left behind, Collier argues that we cannot take a "headless heart" approach to these seemingly intractable problems; rather, that we must harness our despair and our moral outrage at these inequities to a reasoned and thorough understanding of the complex and interconnected problems that the world's poorest people face." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Originally published: 2007.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: What's the issue. Falling behind and falling apart : the bottom billion; title: The traps. The conflict trap; title: The natural resource trap; title: Landlocked with bad neighbors; title: Bad governance in a small country; title: An interlude : globalization to the rescue. On missing the boat : the marginalization of the bottom billion in the world economy; title: Aid to the rescue?; title: Military intervention; title: Laws and charters; title: Trade policy for reversing marginalization; title: The struggle for the bottom billion. An agenda for action.