Studie des World Economic Forum, 9.9.2015 (engl. Originalfassung)
There is no bigger policy challenge preoccupying leaders around the world than expanding social participation in theprocess and benefits of economic growth and integration.
Even if the precise nature and relative importance of thecauses of rising inequality and stagnating median householdincomes remain in debate, a geographically and ideologically diverse consensus has emerged that a new, or at leastsignificantly improved, model of economic growth anddevelopment is required. Despite an accumulation of evidence that reducing inequality can actually strengthen economic growth, the political consensus about inclusive growth is still essentially an aspiration rather than a prescription. No internationally- recognized policy framework and corresponding set of indicators or measurable milestones has emerged to guide countries wishing to construct a more socially inclusive economic strategy that recognizes broad-based progress in living standards, rather than economic growth per se, as the bottom-line measure of national economic performance.
Strong economic growth is the sine qua non of improved living standards. While a growing national economic pie does not guarantee that the size of every household’s piece will be larger, such an outcome is arithmetically impossible unless the overall pie does indeed expand. Growth creates the possibility of a positive-sum game for society, even if it does not assure it. The extent to which economic growth broadens improvements in economic opportunity and living standards is influenced by an interdisciplinary mix of structural and institutional aspects of economic policy, going well beyond the two areas most commonly featured in discussions about inequality: education and redistribution. Appreciation of the crucial role of institutions – particularly legal frameworks and public agencies that administer rules and incentives – in the development process has grown in recent decades, supported by an expanding body of research and practical experience. In fact, economic institution building has been a crucial part of the development path of essentially every country that has industrialized and achieved high living standards.
Because development is a complex and multidisciplinary process – many conditions need to be fulfilled in order for widespread poverty to be replaced by ever-rising middle- class prosperity – this process of institutional deepening occurs across a wide spectrum of domains. But the process is not automatic. Although rising national incomegenerates additional resources and policy space to establish and effectively implement such institutions as public education systems, independent judiciaries, labour markets and protections, and competition, and social insurance frameworks, they do not guarantee it. The pace and pattern of economic institution building is a choice, a function of policy decisions and public-private cooperation. As a result, so is the payoff to broad living standards from economic growth.
The practice of inclusive growth and development therefore requires widening the lens through which priorities are set in national economic strategies. Macroeconomic, trade and financial stability policies remain critically important as they establish the conditions necessary for improvements in productivity that help drive growth. But institutional development in other areas is just as vital to broad-based progress in living standards and consequently deserves equal emphasis in national economic policy. The cultural change that such a rebalancing of emphasis would require in governments and classrooms should not be underestimated, as it represents a different way of thinking about structural reform.
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