Recent decades have seen almost unprecedented economic growth in income per capita around the world. Yet this extraordinary overall performance masks a wide variation in growth rates across different countries, with persistent underdevelopment in some parts of the world. This disparity...

According to the author most African countries after independence opted for state owned enterprises in the export-producing sectors that led to inward-looking policies of economic development. He tries to show from case studies with data from 1960 to 1986 that this was the reason for poor...