Pockets of poverty multiply even in the richest nations and, in spite of the progress made, disparities between countries become more and more profound, according to the book “The Lomé system: empirical analysis of commercial cooperation ACP-EU”, by professor of the University of Granada Carmen María Llorca Rodríguez.
The book, published by the University of Granada, with the collaboration of the Andalusian Council, the European Social Fund and the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences of the University of Granada, includes in 440 pages the history of cooperation for development in the framework of the European communities, the beginning of the Lomé system, ACP-EC and Lomé conventions, the cooperation in basic products, as well as industrial, financial and technique cooperation, etc, until an empirical analysis of commercial cooperation ACP-EU, and the main results and conclusions.
According to the author, Carmen María Llorca, “we can not go for the continuity of the managerial routine in the midst of a technological revolution based on information processing anymore. Reality shows us that it is not about a return to the traditional economic cycle, but to another one in which market rises and falls are the result of an information turbulence which combines economic criteria and other assessment sources.”
According to Professor Llorca Rodríguez technology still expels human work from the production of certain goods and services without providing enough alternative employment in the places where it happens or with the qualification of those extinguished.
Work transference of regions with high wages to countries with lower allows the developed nations to become economies of cheap manpower with possibilities of competing with the new industrialized nations; but the results are socially unbearable for much more time.
In addition, the technological gap between developed and developing countries continues opening more and more and is getting deeper and deeper, with serious implications for the future.
Economic policies, based profound reality studies, are articulated, according to the author of the book, “with the clear intention of improving it and, at the same time, absorbing the imbalance; therefore, reducing economy to a descriptive science involves denying its scientific possibilities. Economy is neither a mathematical science; it is true that it deals with numbers, but man is one of them. Finally, between both positions, I think that a definition emphasizing that economy is a social science which studies how material goods are produced and distributed and how they should be produced and distributed, completed with the idea of that its object of study is not merely wealth itself, but the improvement of individual and collective existence of men in all its essential aspects”.
Reference: Prof Carmen María Llorca Rodríguez. Dpt. of Applied Economics. University of Granada.
Phone number: 958 249 068 / 244 046.
E-mail: cmllorca@ugr.es
