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Article: Why Governments Waste Natural Resources:Policy Failures in Developing Countries.
- Article from:
- Journal of Development Studies
- Article date:
- April 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Frank Cass & Company Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Why Governments Waste Natural Resources: Policy Failures in Developing Countries. By Willia Ascher. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Pp.xi + 333. $59 and $17.95. ISBN 0 8018 6095 4 and 6096 2
This book is about how resource rents are captured, focusing on strategies mainly orchestrated by agents working within state agencies, government ministries or public enterprises, and how these rents are used for pursuing agendas which often imply costly departures from what economists would call 'first-best' Pareto-efficient allocations. The author refers to the policy strategies causing these costly departures as 'wasteful', 'unsound', 'distorted' or ...