The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier

  • The Traps
    • Conflict
    • Natural resources
      • Dutch disease – resource exports cause currency to rise in value, making export activities uncompetitive when those activities may be desired for development
    • Landlocked with bad neighbors
      • Increase neighborhood growth spillovers
      • Improve neighbors’ economic policies
      • Improve costal access
      • Become a haven for the region
      • Don’t be air-locked or e-locked
      • Encourage remittances
      • Transparent and investor-friendly environment for resources prospecting
      • Rural development
      • Try to attract aid
    • Bad governance in a small country
  • The Instruments
    • Aid
    • Military – serves four purposes
      • Expelling an aggressor
      • Restoration of order
      • Maintaining post-conflict peace
      • Preventing coups
  • Laws and Charters
    • Our (developed nations’) laws often affect problems in bottom billion countries
    • Charter for natural resource revenues
    • Charter for democracy
    • Charter for budget transparency
    • Charter for postconflict situations
    • Charter for investment
  • Agenda for Action
    • “But do not think that just because your work is unconnected with development you are off the hook. You are a citizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities” (175-176).
    • “The key obstacle to reforming aid is public opinion. The constituency for aid is suspicious of growth, and the constituency for growth is suspicious of aid” (183).
    • Collier’s three central propositions (192)
    • The development problem is new, and is tightly focused on the Bottom Billion
    • The politics of the Bottom Billion is a “dangerous contest between moral extremes” – the main struggle comes from within those societies
    • “We do not need to be bystanders” – Collier lays out his proposed interventions in the book