52 pages • 1 hour read
Ha-Joon ChangA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
According to some free-market economists, entrepreneurship is essential to a dynamic economy, and a lack of entrepreneurial spirit is holding back developing countries. Chang counters that the opposite is true: People in developing countries have no choice but to be entrepreneurial, and many of them are self-employed. By contrast, in rich countries, most people work for large corporations rather than taking the risk of starting their own business.
However, entrepreneurial spirit alone is not enough to raise individuals and countries out of poverty. Despite the proliferation of small loans offered to poor individuals in developing countries, known as microcredit (or “microloans”), in recent decades, little evidence shows that this practice is successful. Lending institutions must charge high interest rates to cover their costs, and many individuals use the funds to cover personal expenses instead of starting a business. Additionally, as microcredit saturates a given region, borrowers tend to gravitate toward a limited range of feasible business enterprises, which become overcrowded and thus decrease their value and their earnings.
In Chang’s view, the real issue holding back developing economies is a lack of technologies and social organizations to coordinate large-scale collaboration. Even celebrated entrepreneurs such as Thomas Edison and Bill Gates accomplished what they did only because of supportive legal, educational, scientific, and economic frameworks.
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Business & Economics
View Collection
Community
View Collection
Contemporary Books on Social Justice
View Collection
Equality
View Collection
Globalization
View Collection
Immigrants & Refugees
View Collection
Memorial Day Reads
View Collection
Military Reads
View Collection
Nation & Nationalism
View Collection
Philosophy, Logic, & Ethics
View Collection
Politics & Government
View Collection
Popular Book Club Picks
View Collection
Poverty & Homelessness
View Collection
Sociology
View Collection