Books by Paul Collier

The Plundered Planet

Oxford University Press 2010 333.7 COLLIER - Hillsboro

I started this slow - Collier focuses on governance, while I focus on tools for the powerless. That is where the book ends up. He is an economist, and thinks about incentives.

Collier's focus is on stewardship of resources, natural and economic, for the benefit of the poor and the future. He castigates corporate, government, and "romantic" mismanagement.

Quadrants of 194 countries: wealthy, emerging, Russia/China, and the bottom billion, each about 25% of the world's land.

Resource plunder: extracted by foreign corporations, bribes to government ministers, no lasting value for people. Best management would invest the resources in local development, and in wealthy country markets until local conditions permit development.

Resource extraction: Countries don't know what they have. Countries can change the rules and abrogate contracts. Commodity pricing is extremely volatile. This makes pricing deals extremely difficult, and citizens get less because of the cupidity of their rulers. Many resource-extracting countries end up worse-off economically, creating debt in boom times when they should invest almost all of it.

Norway, Botswana, Malaysia: resources turned into long term growth and security. Transition to prosperity can take a decade, patience is rewarded.

Nigeria: vast oil money, misinvested. The Concrete Armada - ships full of concrete for construction, nowhere to unload or use it, so Lagos pays huge demurrage fees for the ships to wait. Nigerian oil wealth redistributed according to population, not usefulness - and provinces inflate population statistics to get more. Lagos is the choke point - more people moving there, insufficient resources, an underequipped gateway to the world.

• ,p129 Nuhu Ribadu, Nigerian policeman appointed by President Obasanjo to prosecute corruption. Chased out after Obasanjo left office.

Steward Brand approvingly mentioned on p015 and p182.

• p133: absorption problem of managing incresed investment. Manage three things 1) public investment (with tendered bidding) 2) complementary private investment 3) price of purchased capital goods.

veto points checkpoints in the process, stopping abuses.

Cost-benefit analysis can fail to capture immeasurable benefits. Economists unavailable to do the analysis.

.p139: doubling city population increases percapita productivity 6%.

Romantics: Anti-tecnnology in Britain (aristos), Anti GMO in Europe, "Food"-ihol in US (but anti-Brazilian sugar biofuel, the efficient kind),

Prince Charles: romantic aristocrat (KL: seemingly no education in science or logical thinking).

MoreLater

The Bottom Billion

Oxford University Press 2007 338.9009 COLLIER - Hillsboro