Arvind Subramanian
AFTER NEARLY FOUR YEARS of working as chief economic adviser to the government of India, I find the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP) initiative frustratingly peripheral to the concerns of developing countries, especially the poorer among them. Full disclosure: Dani Rodrik is a friend and long-time collaborator on work that challenges aspects of EfIP’s paradigm.
To begin with, the EfIP critique responds to problems in advanced economies. It is true that in the rich world, the neoliberal model has failed to deliver much of anything besides enormous returns to the rich and decent GDP growth (and even the latter has not always been a given). Productivity growth has slowed to a crawl, median incomes have stagnated, mobility has declined, and inequality has increased sharply. These problems have in turn bred the political pathologies of democratic authoritarianism and illiberal populism.