A new commission headed by Nobel laureate Michael Spence will study economic growth in the hope of discovering methods of helping poorer countries to grow.
The independent body, backed by the World Bank and the Swedish, Dutch and British governments, aims to identify trends in growth and development, and assess ways of applying these to developing countries.
“The aim is to foster well designed policies for shared and sustained growth that leads to improvements in the wellbeing of the poor,” the Bank said.
The high-profile group will meet periodically over the next two years with Spence, former dean of Stanford Graduate Business School, in the chair. They met for the first time in Washington DC in April, and again this week.
Commission’s members include former Singaporean prime minister Goh Chok Tong, now chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore; Robert Rubin, former secretary of the US Treasury; Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China; and presidents or former presidents of Mexico and Peru, alongside numerous finance ministers.
Asked how they would apply what appears an academic exercise, Spence said: “We’ll spend a lot of time on promulgation. We won’t just write the report and drop it off.” He plans to visit each committee member in their home market during his research.
Spence argued at a briefing in Singapore that growing global imbalances are a serious problem the new study would help to address. “If we stay on the present track, we will end up with 60% of the world’s people being well off, and 40% stagnating or worse,” he said. If that happens, “we’ll have a really explosive situation on our hands 20 years from now”.
Danny Leipziger, World Bank vice president for poverty reduction and economic management, who will be the commission’s vice-chair, sid the report was due at the end of 2007 and not necessarily in time for next year’s World Bank/IMF annual meeting. “It’s not tied to the annual meetings,” he said.