Previous Page Next Page 
(c)  2025 Columbia University Press. All Rights reserved.

Truth, Errors, and Lies: Politics and Economics in a Volatile World resources

Extracted Text (may have errors)

436 6. The Withering of Neoliberalism and Its Tattered Legacy on an even greater scale, which meant that it was not slightly larger than that of Japan, but rather about half as large. This radical rewriting of the estimates did not cast the authors in the best light. How could they have been so wrong? And how could we know that they hadn’t gotten it wrong again? Understandably, GDP according to PPP will always be an approximation, at best. Taking into account all the methodological reservations, I have decided to stick to the origi- nal estimates, which seem to refl ect reality more accurately. 22 . With fertility rates so high in these extremely poor countries (GDP per capita in Niger and Mali amounted to $1,000 and $1,200, respectively, by PPP in 2007), infant mortality below the age of fi 249 per thousand in Niger ve is and 219 per thousand in Mali. By comparison, it is 31 in China and 4 in the most highly developed countries—Finland, Japan, and Sweden. In Poland, it is 8. See Development and the Next Generation (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006), pp. 292–293. 23 . Brzezinski, Second Chance , p. 64. 24 . David Sater, “The Rise of the Russian Criminal State,” Prism , Septem- ber 4, 1998; Janine R. Wedel, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of West- ern Aid to Eastern Europe 1989–1998 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); and “The Harvard Boys Do Russia,” The Nation , June 1, 1998, pp. 11–16. 25 . I published extensively on the subject at the time, even in the New York Times (“Russia Should Put Its People First,” July 7, 1998), The Economist (“Don’t Abandon Russia,” Feb. 27, 1999), and the World Bank’s new research series (“Ten Years of Post-socialist Transition: The Lessons for Policy Re- forms,” Policy Research Working Paper 2095 , April 1999). See also my major book From Shock to Therapy: The Political Economy of Postsocialist Transformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Earmath’s plea nevertheless remains relevant, because the truth has not yet come out decisively on top—if it ever will. 26 . See “The Challenger,” The Economist , Dec. 11, 2004. 27 . Peter Mandelson quoted in a story on the BBC News website: “EU-Russia Relations at Low Ebb,” April 20, 2007, news.bbc.co.uk. 28 . Cf. the 2007 CIA World Factbook (Washington, DC: Central Intelli- gence Agency), www.cia.gov. 29 . Justin Yifu Lin, appointed chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank in 2008, is also a member of the Academic Board of the TIGER Research Center, where he has visited and lectured. See Lessons of China ’s Transition from a Planned to a Market Economy [in]Distinguished Lec- tures Series No. 16 (Warsaw: Leon Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management [WSPiZ]), available at www.tiger.edu.pl. 30 . See Vito Tanzi and Ludger Schuknecht, “The Growth of Government and the Reform of the State in Industrial Countries,” IMF Working Papers 95/130 (1995).

Help

loading