Our Intangible Riches, a Reason magazine article:

Oil, soil, copper, and forests are forms of wealth. So are factories, houses, and roads. But according to a 2005 study by the World Bank, such solid goods amount to only about 20 percent of the wealth of rich nations and 40 percent of the wealth of poor countries.

So what accounts for the majority? World Bank environmental economist Kirk Hamilton and his team in the bank's environment department have found that most of humanity's wealth isn't made of physical stuff. It is intangible. In their extraordinary but vastly underappreciated report, Where Is The Wealth Of Nations?: Measuring Capital for the 21st Century, Hamilton's team found that "human capital and the value of institutions (as measured by rule of law) constitute the largest share of wealth in virtually all countries."

Click here for full article

* Click for overheads for Center for the American Idea presentation October 2006

For International Extemp... Check out www.GlobalEnvision.org!

Recommended

• Economic Freedom: The Path to African Prosperity, by Brett D. Schaefer (Heritage Fd.: 2/20/03)
• Constitutional Engineering and the Transition to Democracy in Post-Cold War Africa by John Mukum Mbaku (Independent Institute).
• The Ivory Bandwagon: International Transmission of Interest-Group Politics by W. Kaempfer and A. Lowenberg (Independent Institute).
• Third World Economic Development, by Clive Crook. Click here for notes on past wealth of Ghana in West Africa and defending austerity programs.
• Global Envision Web Site: reducing world poverty with open markets
• International Policy Network website (lots of globalization links)
• What does the crisis in Argentina tell us about globalization? (Cato page)
• Forbes Global: The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has radical ideas about how to end world poverty
• Forbes Global: Florence Wambugu is using GM foods to feed her country (Kenya)
• Acton Institute International Trade page
• Selective Free Trade harms US economy(Acton)
• Free Trade should be another arrow in America's Anti-Terrorist quiver, by Deroy Murdock

Globalization

• Acton Institute globalization page
• The Return to a Global Economy
• Economic Growth and Freedom in the Coming Millennium
• The Pen is Mightier Than the Plan (Latin America)
• America's Amazing Global Culture

Freedom Index

• Economic Freedom Needed
• Free the World! (FreetheWorld.com)
• Economic Freedom of the World, Annual Report 2002
• Heritage/WSJ 2001 Freedom Index
• Government & the Wealth of Nations

Africa

• Third World Economic Development, by Clive Crook. Click here for notes on past wealth of Ghana in West Africa and defending "austerity programs".
• Growing up in Kenya: June Arunga's Story
• Book review: Africa in Chaos
• Handouts no answer to Africa's poverty
• Africa Fighting Malaria
• UN got it wrong on DDT
• Why Africa Needs Agricultural Biotech
• African Inter Region Economic Network: where a free human mind is capital
• An American in Africa
• Moi Day: The CATO perspective, by James S. Shikwati

Middle East

• Free trade should be another arrow in America's anti-terrorist quiver by Deroy Murdock
• Minaret of Freedom Institute mission is to educate Muslims on the importance of liberty and free markets to a good society, while educating non-Muslims about the beliefs and contributions of Islam and the political realities of conflict between the two cultures.

Foreign Aid

• Handouts no answer to Africa's Poverty
• The Road to Hell (Amazon info.)
• Foreign Aid: Why Do It and What Works? (scholars notes from AEI conf.)

Trade & Investment

• Highly recommended: Acton Institute International Trade page
• Waking Dead Capital
• ISLAM AND MARKETS by Imad A. Ahmad, "The relationship between Islam and trade is not well appreciated in the west..."
• Domes of Trade (a thought experiment)
• Free Trade and Foreign Wars
• Free Trade or Fair Trade?

Environmental

• The Greening of the World Bank, a Cato Foreign Policy Briefing
• Biotech and LDC crops
• Delpoy DDT to Fight Malaria

Latin America

• An American in Argentina
• The Pen is Mightier Than the Plan