William Maloney

Drawing on new data and modeling, the report challenges the traditional view of informality as a homogenous and primarily disadvantaged sector and provides a framework for understanding the logic and dynamics of the sector.

Latin America has lost a century of growth due to its inability to learn: to identify, adapt, and implement new technologies emerging from the Second Industrial Revolution. Building learning economies will require increasing the demand for knowledge, facilitating new ideas, and supporting the ongoing process of experimentation.

This book develops a framework for thinking through such spatially-targeted policies and assessing their social value, while presenting new evidence on key empirical issues.

Does what economies export matter for development? If so, can industrial policies improve on the export basket generated by the market? This book approaches these questions from a variety of conceptual and policy viewpoints. Reviewing the theoretical arguments in favor of industrial policies, the authors first ask whether existing indicators allow policy makers to identify growth-promoting sectors with confidence. To this end, they assess, and ultimately cast doubt upon, the reliability of many popular indicators advocated by proponents of industrial policy.