Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics--Global 2010 : Lessons from East Asia and the Global Financial Crisis

Abstract

The Annual World Bank Conference on
 Development Economics (ABCDE) is a forum for discussion and
 debate of important policy issues facing developing
 countries. The conferences emphasize the contribution that
 empirical economic research can make to understanding
 development processes and to formulating sound development
 policies. Conference papers are written by researchers in
 and outside the World Bank. This year's ABCDE included
 sessions on the following themes: industrial policy and
 development; social capital, institutions, and development;
 financial crisis and regulation; the road to a sustainable
 global economic system; and innovation and competition. In
 light of the global financial crisis, speakers touched on
 fundamental questions: what caused the current crisis, and
 how can the world economy recover?Are the standard
 prescriptions of development economics adequate to the task?
 Should developing countries alter their basic growth
 strategies? What is the proper role of the state? Should
 developing countries reexamine their commitment to free
 trade? How can global imbalances be rectified (especially
 between China and the United States)? Within the globalized
 financial system, how can regulation are improved? In
 attempting to answer these questions, many of the speakers
 searched for solutions in the lessons offered by the
 experience of Korea and other East Asian countries, which
 reacted with varying degrees of success to the financial
 crisis of the late 1990s. This volume includes selected
 papers from the conference as well as keynote addresses by
 SaKong, chairman of the Korean G-20 summit coordinating
 committee, and two distinguished economists: Anne Krueger,
 Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University, and Simon
 Johnson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.