4.3 Emerging and Developing Economies Flashcards
What is Human development index?
Human development is a measure of economic development.
What are the 3 factors HDI is based on?
Health; life expectancy
Education; literacy rates
Income; GNI / capita
Advantages of HDI
- Takes 3 key factors into account
- Relatively easy to calculate
- Widely used; reliable to compare
Disadvantages of HDI
- Income doesn’t include income inequality
- Does not measure levels of absolute/relative poverty
- Education doesn’t take into account the quality/success of education
- Health takes no notice to quality of life
- Other factors affect development e.g corruption/environment
What is the MPI (Multidimensional poverty index)
Measures % of population that is multidimensional poor using data from health, education and living standards indicators.
What is the GPI (Genuine progress index)?
Measures economic sustainability using factors such as income distribution
What is primary product dependency?
Primary product dependency is when a country heavily relies on the export for a primary product or commodity.
Why can primary product dependency be negative?
Natural disasters
- Potentially wipe out production of product e.g mines closed, land infertile
How does volatility of commodity affect growth and development?
Commodities e.g gold, diamond have inelastic supply and demand; changes in demand/supply have huge fluctuations in price
Makes it difficult to plan long term; producers may see their income change rapidly, causing poverty
What is saving gap?
Saving gap is the difference between actual savings and the level of savings needed to achieve growth.
How does saving gap affect growth and development?
Developing countries have lower incomes; they save less.
Less money for banks to lend out so less borrowing
Decreased investment/consumption
What does the Harrod-Domar model state?
Growth rates depend on savings.
Savings can be used by banks to lend to firms; they increase investment
If savings is low, banks can’t lend as much; less investment
How does the Harrod-domar model cycle?
- Low savings
- Low money to lend to firms
- Low investment
- Low incomes
- Low savings
How can countries counter the saving gap?
Microfinance
- small loans are provided to tiny businesses that have no access to financial services
This can help increase investments, productivity and break saving gap cycle
Eval of microfinance
High interest rates
- Profits spent on paying back expensive loans; no money to save; fall back into savings gap
If they are unable to pay back loans, they go bankrup
What is foreign currency gaps?
Currency outflows constantly exceed foreign currency inflows; closely related to trade deficit
How can countries counter foreign currency gaps?
Diversification of exports
- More demand for exports; demand for Ethiopia currency increases; foreign currency gap decreases; price of imports decrease
Eval of diversification of exports
- Requires government investment which could lead to debt
- Only effective in long term
What is capital flight and why may it occur?
Capital flight is when assets rapidly leave the economy.
It may occur if
- a country’s confidence is low
- hide it from government authorities
How does capital flight affect growth and development?
Reduces money available for investment; reduces growth and development
Takes valuable resources out of the country; reduces level of investment