The three texts below (H. B. Chenery and N. G. Carter, 1973; A. Waterson, 1969; and W. Arthur Lewis, 1966) are compulsory reading for my students in planning for development because they give a solid conceptual background for understanding the national and international dimensions of  planning for development in a globalized system of production. (Dr. Róbinson Rojas) 

I. The analytical framework
II. Development performance in the sixties
III. Distribution and efficiency in aid policy
Footnotes
References
Notes to the tables

Part One: The Development Planning Process
The many meanings of planning: - Wartime planning - Town and country planning - Anticyclical planning - National planning - Regional planning
The spread of development planning: - Early planning - Postwar planning
Stages of development planning: - The socialized countries - Evolution of central planning - The pattern of decentralization - The mixed economies - Three stages of planning - Premature comprehensive planning - Experience favors staged approach - Difficulties of comprehensive planning - The problem of projects - Rationalising current public investment
Development plans: - Planning without plans - The variety of plans - The formal status of plans
The duration of plans: - Short-term plans - Medium-term plans - Long-term plans
Plan continuity and flexibility: - Rolling plans - Annual plans - Plan objectives - Plan targets
Basic data for planning: - Relationship between data and planning - Data needed for planning - The question of priorities - Planning with inadequate data -
The budget's role in planning: - The relationship between plan and budget
Administrative obstacles to planning - The implementation of plans

Part two: The organization of planning - Planning machinery priorities - The distribution of planning functions - The funtion and role of a central planning agency - Locating a central planning agency - Types of central planning agencies - Organization of a central planning agency - Subnational regional and local planning bodies - Programing units in operating organizations

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Appendix I. Colombia: questionnaire on investment programs of public entities
Appendix II. Argentina: questionnaire on public investment programs
Appendix III. National plans
Appendix IV. Central planning agencies
Appendix V. Organization chart of Iran's plan organization
Appendix VI. The Philippines National Economic Council
Appendix VII. Morroco (1960) Division of Economic Coordination and Planning
Appendix VIII. India's Planning Commission
Appendix IX. Pakistan, organization chart, planning commission, President's secretariat
Turkey's State Planning Organization

Title
Copyright
Table of Contents
Patterns of Planning
Plan Strategy
Foreign Aid
The Arithmetic of Planning
IO Retrospect
Required School Enrolment
Growth Rate Averages
Resources and Their Use I
Capital Account I
Resources and Their Use II

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From UNIDO
Strategies for Regional Innovation Systems: Learning Transfer and Applications - 2003
(38 pages/428 KB)
Philip Cook, Centre for Advanced Studies, Cardiff University
in cooperation with Olga Memedovic, UNIDO, Strategic Research and Economics Branch

The paper explains the concept of regional innovation systems. It argues that global economic forces have raised the profile of regions and regional governance not least because of the rise to prominence of regional and local business clusters as vehicles for global and national economic competitiveness. Key definitions are given and distinctions drawn. Then, by reference to a number of important dimensions characterizing innovation such as education, knowledge transfer, linkage and communications, four regions from Asia, Europe and Latin America are contrasted. It is shown that regional innovation systems can be underdeveloped by being too dependent on public support, but equally, an over-emphasis on private infrastructures needs to be guarded against except at the most advanced developmental level. A combination of public and private governance at regional level to promote systemic innovation is advocated.

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One of the most important features of capitalist markets is that they create economic inequality as a result of capital accumulation, which appears as an antagonistic contradiction between economic efficiency and social efficiency in any capitalist social formation. Planning for development require practitioners  having a strong understanding of the above feature, particularly because once established economic inequality makes even stronger the political, social, and cultural inequalities already in place, adding to religious, racial and gender inequalities in a sort of self-propelled feedback loop. Here are some useful sections on this in my archive
(Dr. Róbinson Rojas):

-- Inequality - Social exclusion
-- Inequality, poverty, social exclusion and corruption in U.S.A
-- Inequality, poverty, and social exclusion in Latin America
-- Inequality, poverty, social exclusion and corruption in China
-- Spatial Inequality in Asia

Planning for Development require internal and external political and economic conditions allowing national policies to be free from blockages imposed by vested economic and political interests (huge transnational corporations and imperial nation-states) being served by the internal dynamics of capitalist free markets. The texts below deal with this problem within the realm of international trade. They make useful reading for planners for development particularly in developing countries.
(Dr. Róbinson Rojas):

UNCTAD - Trade and Development Reports (TADR):
2007:
Regional cooperation for development
The Trade and Development Report 2007,... recommends that developing countries should strengthen regional cooperation with other developing countries, but proceed carefully with regard to North-South bilateral or regional preferential trade agreements. Such agreements may offer gains in terms of market access and higher foreign direct investment, but they can also limit national policy space, which can play an important role in the medium- and long-term growth of competitive industries


2006:
Global partnership and national policies for development
"The rules and commitments of the international trading regime restrict the de jure ability of developing nations to adopt national development policy".
"Rules and commitments, which in legal terms are equally binding for all countries, in economic terms might impose more binding constraints on developing countries"(p. 167)


2005:
New Features of Global Interdependence
"Natural-resource endowments determine the degree to which selfsufficiency in food and raw materials is compatible with rapid industrial development and growth ... but the balance-of-payments constraint limits import growth." (p. 52)


2004:
Policy coherence, development strategies and integration into the world economy
"The search for economic stability is not between autarky and surrendering national sovereignty to the expansive logic of markets." (p. 97)


2003:
Capital Accumulation, Growth and Structural Change
With the leading industrial countries still not pulling in the same direction, prospects for much of the developing world are clouded by tensions in the trading system, volatility in the currency market and deflationary pressures. This year´s Report traces the difficulties back to the pattern of global trade and financial flows in the 1990s. But the Report also asks whether market-led reforms adopted in many developing countries after the debt crisis of the early 1980s have strengthened these countries´ ability to withstand external shocks.


2002:
Developing Countries in World Trade
The Trade and Development Report 2002 analyses trends and outlooks for the world economy and focuses on export dynamism and industrialization in developing countries. It demonstrates that, although integration into world trade is essential, it is not in itself sufficient for ensuring a country´s development. The Report questions the conventional wisdom that export growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) automatically generate commensurate income gains.

2001:
Global Trends and Prospects - Financial Architecture
International economic issues touch the lives of people everywhere. Whether grappling with the challenges posed by new information technologies, seeking to draw policy lessons from financial crises in emerging markets, or assessing the possible impact of China´s entry into the World Trade Organization, we look to economics as a guide in our rapidly changing world. The poorest nations especially require a clear economic road map if they are to make progress against the persistent problems of hunger, ill health and social insecurity.

2000:
Global Economic Growth and Imbalances
Even as the digital age creates new opportunities, financial fragilities in the world economy continue to constrain policy makers everywhere. Given the severity of East Asia´s financial crisis, much of the focus and concern in recent years has been on developments in the region. This year´s Report takes a careful look at the forces driving the recovery in East Asia, its weakness and the long-term prospects and policy for sustained growth and development.

Recent decades have seen momentous changes in the economic geography of the world. Political transitions and economic liberalization have brought formerly closed countries into the world economy...this has amounted to a doubling of the world labour force...Some of these changes - falling trade and communications costs- have been going on for centuries...the ratio of per capita incomes of the richest to poorest nations increased from around 8:1 in 1870 to more than 50:1 in 2000

"Within the framework of increasing decentralization, the need for local governments to access financial markets is growing. As urbanization expands, local authorities need to provide more services with fewer resources from the central government. Subnational borrowing—leveraging reliable cash flows—and prudent fiscal management can be alternatives to fund such investments, especially when the useful life of the service is long and an adequate legal framework is in place to ensure fiscal and financial stability."
"This book, prepared by staff members of the World Bank and selected guest contributors, consists of two parts. The first part comprises a framework to study subnational governments as borrowers and the array of credit markets in which they may operate. The second part consists of case studies that document the recent experience of 18 countries in developing markets for subnational borrowers and offer lessons about fostering responsible credit market access within a framework of fiscal and financial discipline. The book pools information on the issuing of municipal debt and its characteristics, analyzes the role of macroeconomic conditions and market development in the success or failure of those borrowings, and suggests recommendations to guide ongoing efforts. The goal is to assist local governments in working as strategic partners in the development and strengthening of the capital markets in emerging economies."

...In this book it is proposed to analyse this failure of development from a political stand-point, for discussion of the options in the framework of macroeconomic schema provides no more than commonplace and foreseeable findings. We must aim higher and integrate in the discussion all the economic, political, social and cultural facets of the problem and at the same time fit them into a local framework ( Africa) that takes account of interaction on a world scale.
We acknowledge that this aim comes up against major theoretical difficulties. Social reality as a whole has three facets: economic, political and cultural. The economic aspect is perhaps the best known. In this field, conventional economics has forged tools of immediate analysis and with greater or lesser success of management of an advanced capitalist society. Historical materialism has sought to plunge deeper and has often succeeded in illuminating the character and extent of social struggles underlying the economic choices.
The field of power and politics is relatively less known; and eclecticism in the theories advanced shows the inadequate scientific mastery of the reality. Functional political thought, like its former or recent ingredients (geopolitics, systems analysis, etc.) may sometimes be of immediate use in shaping strategies but remains conceptually impoverished and does not warrant the status of a critical theory. It is true that historical materialism provides a hypothesis as to the organic relationship between the material base and the political superstructure, and the hypothesis is fruitful if it is not too crudely interpreted. The Marxist schools, however, have not conceptualized the issue of power and politics (modes of domination) as they have the categories(modes of production). The propositions in this direction, by Freudian Marxists for example, have the undoubted merit of drawing attention to neglected aspects of the issue but have not yet produced an overall conceptual system. The field of politics lies virtually fallow.
It is not by chance that the first chapter of Volume One of Capital includes the section entitled 'The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof. Marx intends to unveil the mysteries of capitalist society, and the reason why it appears to us as directly governed by economics, in the forefront of the social scene and the determinant of the other social dimensions that seem then to accommodate to its demands. Economic alienation thus defines the essence of the ideology of capitalism. Conversely, pre-capitalist class societies are governed by politics, which takes the forefront of the stage and provide the constraints that other aspects of the social reality - including economic life-seem bound to obey. If a theory of these societies were to be written, the work would be entitled 'Power' (instead of capital for the capitalist mode) and the opening chapter would deal with 'the fetishism of power' (instead of the fetishism of commodities).

Simon Kuznets was awarded the 1971 Nobel Prize in economics for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth, yet, two decades after his death it is only in the guise of the “Kuznets curve” that he may be found in the literature of growth or of economic development. In this paper I review Kuznets’ contribution to growth focusing particularly on his analysis of the costs and benefits of growth and the impossibility of conceptualizing modern economic growth without substantive structural shifts.
Kuznets maintained the impossibility of a purely economic theory of growth. He considered the more general theory as a worthwhile goal but a very remote one at the time. The central problem for Kuznets was to endogenize what economics mostly regards as givens: technology, population, tastes, and institutions.
In his studies of national income and growth Kuznets repeatedly emphasized the problems of scope, valuation, and the distinction between net and gross outputs. The answers to these questions depend on the purpose of economic activity which in turn refers to the social values of the place and time. The solutions, therefore, can never be absolute.

Planning in Malaysia is a two-way interactive process between the EPU, on the one hand, and the line ministries andagencies, on the other, as shown below. This top-down and bottom-up processes ensure that national policies and strategies are realized and development concerns at sub-regional level are fully integrated into the overall national development thrusts.
 Planning from the top which is confined to setting macro level parameters is determined in the context of the Inter- EPU Agencies Planning Groups (IAPGs). The EPU is the secretariat for each of the IAPGs whose work precedes the formulation of any development plan.
Planning from the bottom, on the other hand, essentially involves the line ministries, agencies and the state governments which translate the sectoral master plans into specific programmes and projects. The plays the key role in matching the micro-level programmes and projects with the macro-level plans for each economic sectors

Main functions:
1.- To formulate and implement strategies of national economic and social development, annual plans, medium and long-term development plans; to coordinate economic and social development; to carry out research and analysis on domestic and international economic situation; to put forward targets and policies concerning the development of the national economy, the regulation of the overall price level and the optimization of major economic structures, and to make recommendations on the employment of various economic instruments and policies; to submit the plan for national economic and social development to the National People's Congress on behalf of the State Council.
2.- ....

Falola, Toyin. Development Planning and Decolonization in Nigeria. Gainesville, FM: University of Florida Press, 1996. 215 pp.
A review by Udogu, E Ike
in Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 1999

India’s commitment to planned economic development is a reflection of our society’s determination to improve the economic conditions of our people and an affirmation of the role of the government in bringing about this outcome through a variety of social, economic, and institutional means. The Eleventh Five Year Plan, which was approved by the National Development Council on 19 December 2007 reaffirms this commitment. It provides a comprehensive strategy for inclusive development, building on the growing strength of the economy, while also addressing weaknesses that have surfaced.
The strength of the economy is evident from the remarkable transition to a high growth path, which has been achieved in recent years. The Tenth Plan period (2002–03 to 2006–07) began modestly, but then saw the economy accelerating steadily to achieve an average growth rate of 7.7%, for the Plan period as a whole, which is the highest ever achieved in any Plan period. In the last four years the growth rate has averaged 8.9% making India one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

UNIDO Free Publications:

• Making It magazine
• Enterprise and Business Development
• Industrial Competitiveness and Trade
• Investment and Technology Promotion
• Industrial Policies and Strategies
• Economic Research - recommended (Róbinson Rojas)
• Globalization and Its Implications on Industries - recommended (Róbinson Rojas)
• Environmental Resources and Their Management
• Agro-Industries
• Special Programmes

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