Left behind places can be found in prosperous countries - from South Yorkshire, integral to the industrial revolution and now England's poorest county, to Barranquilla, once Colombia's portal to the Caribbean and now struggling. More alarmingly, the poorest countries in the world are diverging further from the rest of humanity. Why have these places fallen further behind? And what can we do about it? World-renowned development economist Paul Collier has spent his life working in neglected communities. In this book he offers his candid diagnosis of why some regions and countries are falling further behind, and a new vision for how they can catch up. Collier lays the blame for widening inequality on stale economic orthodoxies that prioritize market forces and centralized bureaucracies like the UK Treasury.
