Smith is co-author with Michael Todaro of Economic Development. He is the author of Ending Global Poverty: A Guide to What Works. He is also co-editor with Jennifer Brinkerhoff and Hildy Teegen of NGOs and the Millennium Development Goals: Citizen Action to Reduce Poverty. Smith is the author of other publications including approximately three dozen journal articles. Stephen Smith teaches courses in development economics. He has been a consultant for the World Bank, the International Labour Office, the World Institute for Development Economics Research, and the United Nations Development Programme. Smith has done on-site research and program work in several regions of the developing world including Bangladesh, China, Ecuador, India, Uganda, and the Former Yugoslavia.
Contributions
Poverty
Smith focuses on extreme poverty, or ultra-poverty. Smith’s Ending Global Poverty has a local program and microeconomic focus, in contrast to more macro approaches of Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty, Bill Easterly’s White Man’s Burden and Paul Collier’s Bottom Billion. Smith describes 16 poverty traps, most operating at local levels, and considers solutions. Some of his recent work addresses programs to assist women smallholder farmers and problems of adaptation to climate change in low income countries,.
Economic development
Smith is co-author of Economic Development, the leading text in that field, now in its 12th edition. It begins with comprehensive treatments of institutions, comparative development, and traditional and new theories of development. It examines in-depth development policymaking and roles of market, state, and civil society. The text examines key topics of poverty and inequality, population growth causes and consequences, urbanization and rural-urban migration; education and health in development; agricultural transformation and rural development; environment and development; international trade and development strategy; balance of payments, debt, financial crises, and stabilization policies; foreign finance, investment, and aid; and finance and fiscal policy for development.
Participation
In addition to his work on poverty and development economics, Smith has conducted research on the economics of participation, including works councils, employee stock ownership plan, and worker cooperatives, including research in Italy, Spain, Germany, China, and India. On worker cooperatives, Smith investigated worker coop coexistence with conventional firms; he found evidence from Italy consistent with the hypothesis that coops compete using small innovations contributed by workers and or specializing within sectors in artisan-quality products. He conducted an empirical test of the “Ward effect” theory in which worker coops would reduce output when its market price rose; Smith’s findings cast doubt on this claim, and his results implied that worker coops place positive weight on members’ employment when making production decisions. Smith interpreted clustering patterns of worker coops as helping explain their rarity: Formal and informal coop leagues provide scale economies that help make coops viable; but as leagues need coops to start them the result is a “chicken and egg problem.” Smith also introduced market failure rationales for works council and co-determination legislation.
