Neoclassical economics and the role of information, communication, and culture in socio-economic development: A case study of the structural adjustment programme in Ghana.

摘要

For close to two decades the leading international financial organizations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have imposed their structural adjustment programme on Third World countries, notably in Sub-Saharan African, creating forms of neoclassical financial management at an unsurpassed rate. However, the thesis argues that this approach does not distinguish adequately between policies favourable to the growth and prosperity of developed countries and those pertaining to developing countries in part because the paradigm has an impoverished notion of information, communication, and culture. By fostering this economic paradigm in developing countries, these organizations may, in effect, be imposing an inconsistent model on them in many respects. This thesis explores this conundrum with particular reference to the model's concepts of information, communication, and culture and the consequences of these concepts on the application of the model in Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically in Ghana.; The thesis employs case studies to demonstrate the impact of cultural imperatives on the neoclassical economic concepts of efficiency of competition, trade liberalization, currency devaluation, public expenditure reduction, and privatization promoted by the structural adjustment programme. It suggests that some of the failures of the programme may be ascribed to the great differences between the imperatives of neoclassical economics and the cultural realities of Sub-Saharan Africa.; The thesis takes the position that the incorporation of an understanding of culture and economy similar to that of the communicologists' holistic and wider perspective on economics and economic systems would ameliorate many weaknesses of the structural adjustment programmes of the IMF and the World Bank and enhance the effectiveness of future structural adjustment programmes.