Despite significant gains in promoting economic growth and living conditions (or "human progress") globally over the last twenty-five years, much of the developing world remains plagued by poverty and its attendant problems, including high rates of child mortality, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and war. In Growth and Empowerment, Nicholas Stern, Jean-Jacques Dethier, and F. Halsey Rogers propose a new strategy for development. Drawing on many years of work in development economics-in academia, in the field, and at international institutions such as the World Bank-the authors base their strategy on two interrelated approaches: building a climate that encourages investment and growth and at the same time empowering poor people to participate in that growth. This plan differs from other models for development, including the dogmatic approach of market fundamentalism popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Stern, Dethier, and Rogers see economic development as a dynamic process of continuous change in which entrepreneurship, innovation, flexibility, and mobility are crucial components and the idea of empowerment, as both a goal and a driver of development, is central. The book points to the unique opportunity today-after 50 years of successes and failures, and with a growing body of analytical work to draw on-to pursue new development strategies in both research and action.

Author Biography

Lord Stern is I. G. Patel Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics, past President of the British Academy, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, and former Chief Economist at the World Bank. He was the lead author of the influential Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the findings of which he adapted in his book for general readers, The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity (also known as A Blueprint for a Safer Planet). F. Halsey Rogers is Senior Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Jean-Jacques Dethier is Lead Economist in the Office of the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.