There are concerns that the s that have been built in the last few decades of globalization have become too concentrated, so if something goes wrong … - Ha-Joon Chang

[A] lot of developing countries are dependent on primary commodities, and especially those that are dependent on oil have been devastated because oil demand has collapsed as a result of the pandemic. ...[I]t is important for developing countries to diversify... production structure to avoid this... Easier said than done... Ecuador, under Rafael Correa, tried for about 10 years to shift the production structure. The pull of the oil was so strong that by the end of his term, it was a bit lower, but the dependence was still very high. ...[I]n the next few years, because of the pandemic... primary commodities... (material products) might actually become more important in relative terms... [T]he overall level of demand will be lower... but... in relative terms, at least, primary commodities are going to fare better than... services. The point... is... what happens in the long run will really depend on what you do with the income that you earn from primary commodities. ...[L]uckily a lot of countries have been thinking about industrializing using more active ... so something might happen in some countries and... some... are already doing... very impressive things... Ethiopia has converted a lot of its garment making facilities—basically investments from east Asia: South Korea, China, Taiwan—into factories producing [medical] personal protection equipment... [I]t has converted... passenger jet planes into cargo planes and is doing more cargo business.

I try to explain... how to think, rather than what to think.

History shows that, at earlier stages of economic development, corruption is difficult to control. The fact that today no country that is very poor is very clean suggests that a country has to rise above absolute poverty before it can significantly reduce in the system. When people are poor, it is easy to buy their dignity—starving people find it difficult not to sell their votes for a bag of flour, while under-paid civil servants will often fail to resist the temptation to take a bribe. But it is not just a matter of personal dignity. There are also more structural causes.