Price Distortions and Growth in Developing Countries

摘要

This paper attempts to assess the impact of distortions in prices of goods (traded and nontraded) and factors on growth performance of developing countries. The basic approach followed is that adopted in World Development Report, 1981 and by Messrs. Shankar Acharya and Bela Balassa; in this approach the average performance of countries with high price distortion is contrasted with those with low distortion. The time period covered by the study is the decade of the 1970s, which provided useful material for testing the hypothesis about the role of prices in managing development insofar as during this decade a wide spectrum of policies was followed by different countries over a reasonably long period. (Copyright (c) 1983 The International Bank for Reconstruction.)