Economic Development: What Everyone Needs to Know.

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Date: 01 April 2019
• Author: Giugale, Marcelo M.

Economic Development: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Marcelo M. Giugale. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 248.

Economic development, in general terms, is a process aimed at improving the well-being of individuals. While a topic like this can be very broad, in this book, Marcelo Giugale, a World Bank economist, eloquently reviews and discusses several development issues, particularly focusing on the lives of the poor.

Giugale starts by highlighting the vital role that technology plays in shaping the relationship between the state and citizens. With recent developments related to electronic transfer payment systems, today's governments not only know the poor by their names, but can also gather relevant information about how they spend their money to formulate better welfare programmes in the future (p. 11). While the author talks about this practice in detail, he does not mention anything about data management. As Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Indonesia are beginning to adopt similar systems, their respective governments, for example, should assure the public that the collected data will be fully protected and not used for commercial purposes.

In another chapter, Giugale describes the resource boom phenomenon (discovery of oil, gas and minerals), which, he thinks, is likely to end with a curse. He extends the...