The Asian Development Review is a professional journal for disseminating the results of economic and development research carried out by staff and resource persons of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The Review stresses policy and operational relevance of development issues rather than the technical aspects of economics and other social sciences. Articles are refereed and intended for readership among economists and social scientists in government, private sector, academia, and international organizations.

The Review also invites contributions from external scholars and researchers dealing with Asian and Pacific development issues. All submitted manuscripts are subject to review by two external referees and one ADB staff member.

About the Asian Development Bank: ADB’s vision is an Asia and Pacific region free of poverty. Its mission is to help its developing member countries substantially reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their people. Despite the region’s many successes, it remains home to two thirds of the world’s poor.

Nearly 1.7 billion people in the region live on $2 or less a day. ADB is committed to reducing poverty through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration.

Based in Manila, ADB is owned by 67 members, including 48 from the region. Its main instruments for helping its developing member countries are policy dialogue, loans, equity investments, guarantees, grants, and technical assistance. In 2007, it approved $10.1 billion of loans, $673 million of grant projects, and technical assistance amounting to $243 million.

Download Asian Development Review, Volume 24, Number 2, 2006

PDF format, 963KB, 99Pages. Publihsed by ADB.

Planners versus Searchers in Foreign Aid
William Easterly

Only for the recipients of foreign aid is something akin to central planning seen as a way to achieve prosperity. The end of poverty is achieved with free markets and democracy—where decentralized “searchers” look for ways to meet individual needs—not Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The PRSPs and MDGs create lots of bureaucracy but hold no one specific agency in foreign aid accountable for any one specific task.

Planners in foreign aid use the old failed models of the past—the “Financing Gap”, the “poverty trap”, the government-to-government aid model; and the “expenditures = outcomes” mentality. Searchers in foreign aid would imitate the feedback and accountability of markets and democracy to provide goods and services to individuals until homegrown markets and democracy end poverty in the society as a whole. An example of the more promising “searchers” approach in foreign aid is 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate Mohammad Yunus and Grameen Bank.

India: The Past and Its Future
Raghuram G. Rajan

Inclusiveness of Economic Growth in the People’s Republic of China:
What Do Population Health Outcomes Tell Us?
Ajay Tandon, Juzhong Zhuang, and Somnath Chatterji

Investment Climate, Productivity, and Regional Development in a Developing Country
Ernesto M. Pernia and J. M. Ian S. Salas

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ISSN: 0116-1105
Publication Stock No. 042008

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