Economic development

[2] Development and urban studies scholar Karl Seidman summarizes economic development as "a process of creating and utilizing physical, human, financial, and social assets to generate improved and broadly shared economic well-being and quality of life for a community or region".

According to Schumpeter and Backhaus (2003), the changes in this equilibrium state documented in economic theory can only be caused by intervening factors coming from the outside.

[9] From the 1940s to the 1960s the state played a large role in promoting industrialization in developing countries, following the idea of modernization theory.

Neoliberalism emerged in the 1980s pushing an agenda of free trade and removal of import substitution industrialization policies.

Economic development was concerned with the expansion of people's entitlements and their corresponding capabilities, such as morbidity, nourishment, literacy, education, and other socio-economic indicators.

[12] It has also been argued, notably by Asian and European proponents of infrastructure-based development, that systematic, long-term government investments in transportation, housing, education, and healthcare are necessary to ensure sustainable economic growth in emerging countries.

[1] According to Martha Finnemore, the World Bank under McNamara's tenure "sold" states poverty reduction "through a mixture of persuasion and coercion.

"[1] The development of a country has been associated with different concepts but generally encompasses economic growth through higher productivity,[13] political systems that represent as accurately as possible the preferences of its citizens,[14][15] The extension of rights to all social groups and the opportunities to get them[16] and the proper functionality of institutions and organizations that can attend more technically and logistically complex tasks (i.e. raise taxes and deliver public services).

In any case, it is important to not expect that particular economic development programs be able to fix many problems at once as that would be establishing unsurmountable goals for them that are highly unlikely they can achieved.

Any development policy should set limited goals and a gradual approach to avoid falling victim to something Prittchet, Woolcock and Andrews call 'premature load bearing'.

This has been something overlooked by multiple international organizations, aid programs and even participating governments who attempt to carry out 'best practices' from other places in a carbon-copy manner with little success.

Governments that can raise a significant amount of revenue from this source are less accountable to their citizens (they are more autonomous) as they have less pressure to legitimately use those resources.

Seguino and Heintz Seguino concludes that the impact of a one percentage point increase in the federal funds rate relative to white and black women's unemployment is 0.015 and 0.043, respectively[26] One growing understanding in economic development is the promotion of regional clusters and a thriving metropolitan economy.

They include the news media, foundations, utilities, schools, health care providers, faith-based organizations, and colleges, universities, and other education or research institutions.

There are various types of macroeconomic and sociocultural indicators or "metrics" used by economists and geographers to assess the relative economic advancement of a given region or nation.

[32] Other factors include the inflation rate, investment level and national debt, birth and death rates, life expectancy, morbidity, education levels (measured through literacy and numeracy rates), housing, social services like hospitals, health facilities, clean and safe drinking water, schools (measured by the distance learners must travel to reach them), ability to use hard infrastructure (railways, roads, ports, airports, harbours, etc.