Catching Up: What LDCs Can Do, and How Others Can Help

by Paul Collier

Despite impressive achievements during the last decade by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), progress has not matched that of the developed world. Although improvements have been made in areas such as per capita income and infant mortality, in relative terms the gap has in fact widened, meaning that LDCs have to progress even faster or be left further behind.

In this new publication, Paul Collier, economist and award-winning author of The Bottom Billion , puts forward that there are many policies that could have been effective in enabling LDCs to reduce this differentiation, but due to a lack of strategic focus this has not been achieved.

Collier argues that the only actors who can lead this process are the governments of LDCs themselves working together towards clear and well-founded goals. He outlines potential future problems such as the extraction of natural resources and the threat of climate change, as well as strategies to best counter them.

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Paul Collier, CBE is a Professor of Economics, Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Antony's College. He is the author of The Plundered Planet; Wars, Guns, and Votes; and The Bottom Billion, winner of Estoril Distinguished Book Prize, the Arthur Ross Book Award, and the Lionel Gelber Prize.