World Development Report 2009: A Practical Economic Geography

abstract

The World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography (WDR 2009a) was written to inform policy debates about urbanization, lagging areas, and globalization. During almost two years of consultations and dissemination, the report met with broad acceptance among government officials, development professionals, and researchers. Policymakers grappling with difficult spatial development issues have found the report’s analytical framework compelling and its policy guidance useful. An exception to this generally favorable reception has been the reaction from a number of economic geographers. In this article, we respond to criticisms about the report’s scope, guiding framework, and policy implications that are emphasized in the accompanying articles in this issue of Economic Geography. In conclusion, we agree with economic geographers such as RodrÍguez-Pose who call for critical engagement with the report and with the more detailed follow-up studies that use the WDR 2009’s framework. This would both improve the quality of spatial policy advice and increase the visibility of economic geographers in international development debates.

Key Words:

• economic development
• urbanization
• lagging areas
• globalization

Acknowledgments

The authors are members of a larger team that drafted the World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography and are at the World Bank. They would like to thank Jamie Peck and Eric Sheppard for organizing this roundtable. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this article are entirely those of the authors. They do not represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent.

When we began drafting the World Development Report 2009 (henceforth the WDR 2009 or report), our executive editor advised each chapter author to keep a specific person in mind, the person “whose mind we would like to change.” Afterwards at a meeting of the authors, we learned that each of us was writing to influence or inform a policymaker—ministers of planning or finance; or those overseeing trade, transportation, or urban development; or those determining the destination of international aid.

Notes

1 The WDR 2009 (World Bank 2009a) team has engaged policymakers and development specialists in Afghanistan, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bhutan, Brazil, Burundi, China, Vietnam, Colombia, Cote D’Ivoire, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, The Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen. The report has also been discussed at seminars in multilateral development institutions such as the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Commission, and several bilateral development agencies such as the U.K. Department for International Development.

2 Links to these studies can be found at http://www.worldbank.org/wdr2009 or http://www.wburbanstrategy.org

3 A few years before he won the Nobel Prize, economist Robert E. Lucas, Jr., made a confession that a lot of economic analysis was essentially storytelling. “Economists have an image of practicality and worldliness not shared by physicists and poets. Some economists have earned this image. Others … have not. I’m not sure whether you will take this as a confession or a boast, but we are basically story-tellers” (Lucas 1988).