Oliver Kim
Development economist and economic historian who writes the Global Developments newsletter. He works on East Asian growth — Taiwanese land reform, Korean industrial policy — and on what the East Asian record does and does not tell other poor countries.
Oliver Kim did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsIn our world, we know of no escape from poverty other than climbing the value chain.
↗Indonesia Climbs the Chainglobal-developments.org 1st of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsMorowali’s poverty rate has seen a modest decline since 2016, from around 15% to 12%, but this puts it squarely in the middle of the pack of other Sulawesi districts—and not far from the decline in the national average, which fell from 10.9% to 8.6% over the same period.
↗Indonesia Climbs the Chainglobal-developments.org 2nd of 5 in this piece
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Our reading
Industrial policy that grows a poor country’s economy does not automatically reduce its poverty.
Their wordsBut, peering past the hype around Morowali reminds us that we should be careful before assuming that industrial policy must be pro-poor.
↗Indonesia Climbs the Chainglobal-developments.org 3rd of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsPoverty reduction is never a purely technocratic exercise, and questions about industrial policy can never be entirely divorced from those of political economy—including those of global geopolitics.
↗Indonesia Climbs the Chainglobal-developments.org 4th of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsIt’s one thing if residents of Sulawesi like Mr. Jamal and his family have had to risk exposure to toxic pollutants in a successful escape from poverty. It’s another thing entirely if those bearing most of the burden see few of the benefits.
↗Indonesia Climbs the Chainglobal-developments.org 5th of 5 in this piece
- 5 months earlier
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Their wordsEven as GDP has grown tenfold, US aid budgets have remained basically flat in real terms—the result (one might guess) of a delicate balancing act between bipartisan consensus among elites and a wariness of attracting too much negative attention.
↗A World Without Aid?global-developments.org 1st of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsThe longevity of that consensus is itself remarkable: in 79 years of data, Republican presidents spent an average of $34 billion a year on aid, while Democrats spent $40 billion.
↗A World Without Aid?global-developments.org 2nd of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsAll this to say: capable states with ambitious developmental plans, when hit with a bazooka of money, can seize the opportunity to transform themselves.
↗A World Without Aid?global-developments.org 3rd of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsAs scholars like Nicolas van de Walle have pointed out, aid can also foster an unhealthy dependency—in his coinage, many African states live in a state of “permanent crisis”, where aid is large enough to reshape (and warp) the political economy around it, but not large enough to be fundamentally transform countries’ economies.
↗A World Without Aid?global-developments.org 4th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsAmerican aid obligations in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, have never exceeded $15 per person
↗A World Without Aid?global-developments.org 5th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsThe potential end of USAID is an unfolding public health and humanitarian disaster, but it does not permanently doom the task of growth—in large part because these aid flows were far too small to begin with.
↗A World Without Aid?global-developments.org 6th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsFor people like me working on global development in the West, the bitter pill to swallow is that aid is not development.
↗A World Without Aid?global-developments.org 7th of 7 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsAt independence, South Korea and Taiwan had far higher rates of primary education than most of Sub-Saharan Africa.
↗No, South Korea Was Not Poorer Than Kenya in 1960global-developments.org 1st of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsCatch-up growth in the 20th century was almost entirely state-led.
↗No, South Korea Was Not Poorer Than Kenya in 1960global-developments.org 2nd of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsThe Japanese empire reached far deeper into its colonies than any European empire ever did in Sub-Saharan Africa.
↗No, South Korea Was Not Poorer Than Kenya in 1960global-developments.org 3rd of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsThe fact remains that without a stock of capable administrators, industrial policy and export targeting and infrastructure-building—or even Adam Smith’s minimum of “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice”—are a nonstarter.
↗No, South Korea Was Not Poorer Than Kenya in 1960global-developments.org 4th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsPrecisely how much the ancient continuity of East Asian states matters for development is still a little murky, and the delineation with colonial legacies is still an area of active debate—but the balance of evidence suggests that the legacies of these pre-colonial states stretched through the colonial period, extending even into the post-independence era.
↗No, South Korea Was Not Poorer Than Kenya in 1960global-developments.org 5th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsThe relative absence of pre-colonial states meant that the newly independent African states were largely European inventions; modern Kenya, for instance, inherits the boundaries of British East Africa, which was created by pulling together the Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin, and Kamba ethnic groups.
↗No, South Korea Was Not Poorer Than Kenya in 1960global-developments.org 6th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsAfrican states formed where it was rational to do so, in places like the Ethiopian highlands where population density was high and the disease burden was relatively low.
↗No, South Korea Was Not Poorer Than Kenya in 1960global-developments.org 7th of 8 in this piece