One Economics, Many Recipes:
Globalization, Institutions, and
Economic Growth by Dani Rodrik
Interesting, Thought Provoking Book
In One Economics, Many Recipes, leading economist Dani Rodrik argues
that neither globalizers nor antiglobalizers have got it right. While economic
globalization can be a boon for countries that are trying to dig out of
poverty, success usually requires following policies that are tailored to local
economic and political realities rather than obeying the dictates of the
international globalization establishment. A definitive statement of Rodriks
original and influential perspective on economic growth and globalization,
One Economics, Many Recipes shows how successful countries craft their
own unique strategies--and what other countries can learn from them.
To most proglobalizers, globalization is a source of economic salvation for
developing nations, and to fully benefit from it nations must follow a
universal set of rules designed by organizations such as the World Bank,

the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization and
enforced by international investors and capital markets. But to most
antiglobalizers, such global rules spell nothing but trouble, and the more
poor nations shield themselves from them, the better off they are. Rodrik
rejects the simplifications of both sides, showing that poor countries get
rich not by copying what Washington technocrats preach or what others
have done, but by overcoming their own highly specific constraints. And,
far from conflicting with economic science, this is exactly what good
economics teaches.
Personal Review: One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization,
Institutions, and Economic Growth by Dani Rodrik
This is a terrific book. It begins with a good and troubling question: If
economists are so smart, why have the most prominent success stories in
economic development in recent decades been in countries (China, India,
South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) that ignored our advice? Rodrik's
answer is that the advice - mainly Washington Consensus and then its
follow-ons - was not so much wrong as a) premature and b) insufficiently
flexible. His analysis of recent experience suggests that there are many
ways to get growth started in a stagnant economy, and that it takes a very
specific, informed, and open-minded local analysis - what he terms "growth
diagnostics" - to determine what exactly are the binding constraints in each
setting. Furthermore, policies that address those constraints must be
politically viable, and that may mean tailoring them so that they create
better incentives at the margin without destroying or transferring existing
rents.
Once economic growth has started, THEN some of the more standard
policy prescriptions, introduced carefully and gradually, may be appropriate
and even necessary in order to make growth sustainable. Thus, for
example, Rodrik argues that both China and India are moving now in more
orthodox policy directions, and appropriately so, but that both relied on
quite unorthodox measures to make their initial way out of stagnation.
There are many other issues addressed, including the importance of
political arrangements that allow local needs and preferences to be
expressed and the case for international trade policies that allow for
diversity in national institutional arrangements. The book closes with a
detailed and (to me) quite persuasive critique of the focus of the WTO on
increasing trade for the sake of trade rather than considering more
carefully which changes in trade policy actually make a difference in the
lives of the world's poor. His analysis of the Doha Round suggests that,
contrary to the received wisdom, a general worldwide liberalization of
agricultural markets and removal of developed country subsidies would
lead to only small reductions in poverty, and in fact would likely harm many
poor consumers in many countries.

I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in globalization and
development. It is extremely well written, though some sections may be
slow going for non-economists. The overall analysis should be quite
readable and thought-provoking for the general reader wishing to get a
fresh perspective on these important issues.
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