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The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can be Done About it | 
 enlarge | Author: Paul Collier
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £4.37
You Save: £4.62 (51%)
New (11) Used (3) from £4.37
Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 1001
Media: Paperback
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.5
ISBN: 0195374630
EAN: 9780195374636
ASIN: 0195374630
Publication Date: October 2, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Shipped from UK Mainland. Delivery is usually 3 - 4 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Summarizes Statistical Studies of Factors Affecting Incomes for People in the Poorest Countries November 27, 2007
Donald Mitchell (Boston)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Are you troubled by the grinding poverty in the poorest countries? If so, this book will give you hope that something more can be done.
How can a global economy that routinely produces new billionaires leave a billion people behind in countries where the economic prospects are bleak despite enormous spending aimed at turning things around? Obviously, the remedy isn't working. You could have figured that out for yourself without reading this book.
Professor Paul Collier takes us beyond that disquieting simplification to measure what some of the reasons are that contribute to the stalled economies in those countries (which are mostly located in sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia) where a billion people live.
The primary factors that he can isolate include frequent armed conflicts (coups, civil wars, and wars with other countries), producing high value natural resources that can be easily exported, having no access to the oceans while being surrounded by neighboring countries having a lot of problems, and poorly performing government in a small country. Armed conflicts not only take a lot of lives and do a lot of damage; armed conflicts drive people into new areas creating enormous dislocations and increased disease. Armed conflicts interrupt the ability to run a farm, a business, or to have a normal life. High value exports encourage those in government to seek payoffs from the exports while the exports drive up the value of the currency making local businesses less competitive with imports. If you are surrounded by bad neighbors, you cannot do much exporting or importing so your economy is stuck where it is. A poorly performing government simply siphons off funds into corruption.
If a poor country overcomes these problems, it has new issue: There may not be a local size sufficient to compete with other low-cost labor markets in global exports.
Give a country too much aid of the wrong kind, and you make things worse. Excess infrastructure aid (a current favorite among developed countries) leads to corruption and more spending on the military (which increases the risk of armed conflicts). Military intervention is only cost effective if those who are the peace keepers are serious and the spending is low (unlike Iraq). Laws and charters can provide guidelines that can make the subsequent actions more appropriate. Appropriate trade policies can also help open markets for those from the poorest countries.
The book concludes with a call to action to shift development spending from the middle four billion to the bottom billion while increasing reliance on influences other than sending money for aid.
I appreciated having the chance to read this book and recommend it to those who want to know what can be done to help the poorest people. I would have learned more if Professor Collier had shared more details of his research, rather than just citations of his academic works. I was particularly interested in how strong these statistical patterns are. I was also curious about the multivariate effect of these factors in the past.
I have a lot of admiration for the hard work that goes into assembling data to do this kind of work and to then find ways to draw conclusions from the data that make sense. Bravo to Professor Collier and his colleagues!
At the same time, I would encourage serious readers to also look at the problem from the ground up . . . what educated people who live in these countries can do to make things better for the most impoverished. I am highly encouraged by the work that some of my students have done in identifying how small educational and capital inputs can generate enormous numbers of successful entrepreneurs who need employees. Many of these nations lack an educational infrastructure that can produce the skilled labor and business leadership needed for rapid economic growth. It looks to me like working on providing such advanced educational opportunities could be a great way to attack these persistent problems, as well.
This book is worth buying, reading and acting on November 24, 2007
T. Leunig (London, UK)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a first rate book that deserves to be read widely. It is aimed at the intelligent general reader, rather than at the economist or the development wonk. That said, most of them would enjoy reading it too, and would gain a lot from doing so. It is based on many years of top-quality research.
The book sets out the "4 traps" that can and do consign a country to poverty: conflict, natural resources (such as oil and diamonds), being landlocked with bad neighbours, and suffering bad governance. It also sets out the possibilities: looking at how countries like China, India, Vietnam etc have developed remarkably well in recent years. It then goes on to look at the sorts of policies that can be used to get the bottom billion on track to follow the path set out by the emerging economies. Those policies are (as expected) aid and trade, but Collier also sets out a role for transparency and even military intervention. Not to depose bad regimes, but to prevent (and occasionally reverse) coups, in the Sierra Leone model. A friend in the Aid-Biz told me once that that intervention was so successful that the people of SL would happily have voted to make Tony Blair their constitutional monarch. The book also explains the different strengths and weaknesses of each approach in different circumstances.
The prize for getting policies towards the bottom billion correct is immense: it would mean that, within my lifetime malnutrition would be abolished. No child would go to bed hungry. We have seen how fast change can happen - in Japan early this century, in Korea after the war, and, as mentioned, in any number of East and South Asian countries today.
We can do this, and Collier sets out much more convincingly than Sachs, Easterly or most aid agencies, how to do this. As citizens we need to press our leaders to advocate the policies in this book. If we do that, then, together we can make a dramatic difference.
(The author is an economist, teaching economic history at the London School of Economics)
Objective, unbiased, mind-opening and readable August 9, 2007
George Haines (New York)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
This book is not only fascinating and thought-provoking, but very easy to read. Collier distills concepts that are broad, deep and complicated like few writers I have come across. He is probably an excellent teacher because he can translate his knowledge into language I can understand.
The big reason to buy this book is that he does a great job explaining exactly why being resource-rich is a curse. Others have alluded to this phenomenon, but Collier is the first to really impact my understanding of the issue. He also explains why electoral democracies with poor checks and balances are actually worse at dealing with this curse than autocracies.
The good news is that full-fledged liberal democracies with strong checks on executive spending are able to out-compete them both.
This book is refreshing because he is not a polemic loud-mouth like so many writers on politics, aid and development. He is very conscious of over-reach and he is very measured in his praise and condemnation. He seems like a reasonable guy with a ton of experience and some very good ideas about helping make the world a better place.
He offers counter-intuitive insights into many issues regarding aid and development and he debunks a few myths.
Charles Abugre/ Steven Buckley? not only has two names, but an obvious bias. I am surprised that more of the agencies Collier took to the mat have not written bad reviews in an attempt to silence Paul Collier. I will be looking to see if Robert Mugabe reviews the book and claims that Collier has it out for him too. I would hope so.
The book is only 188 pages, just buy it already. You won't regret it.
Impressive work of scholarship and prose August 10, 2007
James Schulz
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
It is rare to find a book that is filled with path-breaking scholarship that is also fun to read. But The Bottom Billion fits that bill. I don't agree with all of Collier's conclusions. But this is such an impressive contribution to the development literature that the merits dwarf any quibbles I may have. If you care about the global poor, please buy and read this book.
A joy to read January 2, 2008
Nicholas Argyris (Scotland)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a thought-provoking book: the problems of the poorest countries are deeply and cogently analysed and explained, and appropriate policies proposed. It has the added virtue of being written in simple and refreshingly straight-forward language. There is much that is absolutely original here.
The one comment I have is that Collier bases some of his policy prescriptions on the assumption that the only way to develop is through export, which seems to suggest export-led growth and large projects. There is nothing about micro projects and the need to work with the poor to alleviate poverty through the provision of appropriate/intermediate technology.
I e-mailed him about this and received a rapid and courteous reply saying that he did not have space in the book to cover everything and that he agreed that exporting only makes sense as a growth strategy for some countries and that he has no fault to find with the micro approach.
He also suggested I might write this review; so I did.
PS I also thoroughly recommend the lecture on his website.
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