Habits of Highly Effective Countries

From the Atlas Economic Research Foundation...

The report, “Habits of highly Effective Countries, Lessons for South Africa" by Leon Louw ( Law Review Project, South Africa), reveals how developing nations must make radical changes in order to ensure a prosperous future.

“Through statistical analysis of the world’s most and least successful countries we found that, out of hundreds of options, there is a short list of policies associated with winners and losers respectively. This report provides an outline of effective policies that any country seeking growth should adopt,” according to Louw.

A selection of effective habits that the report reveals are:
• Prosperous countries are in the minority and seem exceptional but it is poverty that is the economic miracle: left to their own devices, people appear to trade and manufacture, thus producing wealth spontaneously. Only bad policies can curtail this natural propensity.
• Improving the legal system, from guaranteeing contracts to reducing crime, is a major factor.
• Free trade, leading to more foreign trade. Protectionism is a big favourite with many aid activists and they like to point to South Korea and Japan as successful examples: in those cases, that bad policy was simply outweighed by other good policies.
• There is no evidence that foreign aid, debt relief, subsidies, technical assistance or protectionism have the potential to “make poverty history.” There is plenty of evidence that aid, instead, makes poverty by feeding corruption and sustaining policies that perpetuate poverty and keep the aid money flowing. This study can be adopted to other countries and has the potential to be an extremely effective tool for think tanks in countries across the globe.

To download the full study, please click on Habits of Highly Effective Countries (PDF, 63pp, 1.6 MB)