8 - Organizational and institutional innovations

Summary

Reforms to create a growth-oriented market

Understanding the growth process brings us to how to accelerate it. Measures of economic policy can have more than ephemeral success only if they are based on appropriate organizational and institutional innovations. I shall present in this chapter some reflections on a strategy of reforms that can lead to fostering sustainable economic growth. If we consider the distinction among low-, middle- and high-income countries, we have to be well aware that such a partition, that appears to be quantitative, presupposes a great variety of routes and thus a great variety of problems. In keeping with the Smithian approach adopted here, each country requires a preliminary study of the main lines of its historical evolution: quantities, considered in isolation, are misleading.

Economic growth cannot be seen as an unmixed blessing. In its course, it destroys many traditional values and creates deep changes in ways of life and in systems of ideas: the uninterrupted process of adaptation cannot go on without suffering. It is then understandable that certain regimes place restraints on the growth process, mainly for ethical and religious reasons. And yet, after certain countries have entered into a process of growth, other countries have been compelled to follow, either to preserve or to regain their independence or to obtain advantages similar to those that the pioneer countries obtained in terms of improved living conditions.