Description
World Development Report 1998-1999, now in its twenty-first edition, focuses on the role of knowledge and information as a factor of development, including the important trade-offs in strategies and policies and many other challenges. It examines such important questions as why some developing countries have been able to exploit the rapidly increasing stock of global knowledge more than others and what can be done to help those falling behind. The Report also looks at the challenge of finding a balance between private initiative and public intervention that would encourage innovation and manage attendant risks. It deals with international assistance and international organizations, which can help develop understanding about these complex processes, help transfer lessons of development experience across countries, and help finance crucial knowledge investments of importance to developing countries. Known as the standard reference for international economic data, the World Development Report 1998-1999 provides a set of Selected World Development Indicators as an appendix, presenting social and economic statistics for more than 200 countries.
Read More
The information revolution makes understanding knowledge and development more urgent than before. New communication technologies and plummeting computing costs are transforming distance and eroding borders and time, but the fact remains that people still lack basic, life-saving knowledge because simple information does not flow as readily as one would hope.This year's Report, the twenty-first in this annual series, examines the role of knowledge in advancing economic and social well being. It proposes that we step back from the familiar problems of development and consider them from a fresh, new perspective: the perspective of knowledge. In studying these issues, the Report considers two sorts of knowledge: how-to knowledge (farming, health or accounting) and knowledge about attributes (the quality of a product, credibility of a borrower, or the diligence of an employee). The Report suggests three lessons that are particularly important to the welfare of the billions of people living in developing countries. First, developing countries must institute policies that will enable them to narrow the knowledge gaps that separate poor countries from rich countries. Second, developing country governments, multilateral institutions, non-governmental organizations and the private sector must work together to strengthen the institutions needed to address information problems. Finally, no matter how effective these endeavors are, problems with knowledge will persist, but by recognizing that knowledge is at the core of all our development effort, unexpected solutions to seemingly intractable problems will be discovered.
Read Less