Third World Countries

(noun)

Those countries not aligned with the west or the east during the Cold War, especially the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Related Terms

Examples of Third World Countries in the following topics:

  • Answers to Chapter 3 Questions

    • Emerging economies were third-world countries.
    • Would you invest in an emerging market or a third-world country?
    • A country could produce within the interior of a production possibilities curve.
    • Outsourcing is one firm sends part of its production outside the country to reduce costs.
    • However, the firm sells the cheaper product in its home country.

  • Chapter Questions

    • Could a country produce within the interior of a production possibilities curve?
    • You have two countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Colombia.
    • Both countries grow tobacco and coffee.
    • Two countries can produce a maximum with their resources in the table.
    • Identify the gain of production if the two countries engage in free trade.

  • Least Industrialized Countries

    • The world's least industrialized countries have low income, few human resources, and are economically vulnerable.
    • In contrast to industrialized and industrializing countries, the world's least industrialized countries exhibit extremely poor economic growth and have the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) measures in the world.
    • In the past, countries that are now labeled as LDCs were known as "third world" countries.
    • Third world countries were undeveloped countries that were neither major players in the capitalist world market nor communist states under the USSR.
    • Most current scholars consider the term "third world" to be outdated.

  • Negative and positive effects of globalization for developing country business

    • Protectionist policies in industrialized countries prevent many producers in the Third World from accessing export markets;
    • Competition among developing countries to attract foreign investment leads to a "race to the bottom" in which countries dangerously lower environmental standards
    • It creates greater opportunities for firms in less industrialized countries to tap into more and larger markets around the world
    • In addition to bringing in capital, outsourcing helps prevent "brain drain" because skilled workers may choose to remain in their home country rather than having to migrate to an industrialized country to find work.
    • With regard to the environment, international trade and foreign direct investment can provide less industrialized countries with the incentive to adopt, and the access to, new technologies that may be more ecologically sound (World Bank Briefing Paper, 2001).

  • Dependency Theories

    • Countries have developed at an uneven rate because wealthy countries have exploited poor countries in the past and continue to do so today through foreign debt and foreign trade.
    • For example, between 1970 and 2002, the continent of Africa received $540 billion in loans from wealthy nations—through the World Bank and IMF.
    • Countries cannot focus on economic or human development when they are constantly paying off debt; these countries will continue to remain undeveloped.
    • The governments of poor countries invite these TNCs to invest in their country with the hope of developing the country and bringing material benefit to the people.
    • Explain malnourishment and hunger in the "third world" through dependency theory

  • Thinking Globally

    • The world-system refers to the international division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries, and the periphery countries.
    • Core countries focus on higher-skill, capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production, and the extraction of raw materials.
    • For a time, some countries become the world hegemon; throughout the last few centuries, this status has passed from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom and, most recently, to the United States.
    • Poor countries are thus in a continual state of dependency to rich countries .
    • Hybridization is a similar idea, emerging from the field of biology, which refers to the way that various sociocultural forms can mix and create a third form which draws from its sources, but is something entirely new.

  • World-Systems Theory

    • World Systems Theory posits that there is a world economic system in which some countries benefit while others are exploited.
    • World Systems Theory, like dependency theory, suggests that wealthy countries benefit from other countries and exploit those countries' citizens.
    • In contrast to dependency theory, however, this model recognizes the minimal benefits that are enjoyed by low status countries in the world system.
    • Core countries own most of the world's capital and technology and have great control over world trade and economic agreements.
    • Produce a map of the world that shows some countries as core, peripheral, and semi-peripheral according to Wallerstein's theory

  • Trade and Globalization

    • The World Trade Organization (WTO) was formed to supervise and liberalize international trade on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement.
    • Trade sanctions against a specific country are sometimes imposed in order to punish that country for some action.
    • The fair trade movement promotes the use of labor, environmental, and social standards for the production of commodities, particularly those exported from the Third and Second Worlds to the First World.
    • In 2001, it also joined the World Trade Organization.
    • By 2009 it included 153 countries.

  • The Third Intermediate Period

    • The Amun priests of Thebes owned two-thirds of all the temple lands in Egypt and 90 percent of her ships and many other resources.
    • The Twenty-Second (c. 943 - 716 BCE) and Twenty-Third (c. 880 - 720 BCE) Dynasties
    • This unification brought stability to the country for well over a century, but after the reign of Osorkon II, the country had shattered in two states with Shoshenq III of the Twenty-Second Dynasty controlling Lower Egypt by 818 BCE while Takelot II and his son Osorkon (the future Osorkon III) ruled Middle and Upper Egypt.
    • The Nubian kingdom to the south took full advantage of the division of the country.
    • Describe the general landscape of the political chaos during Third Intermediate Period

  • The European Central Bank

    • Many countries eliminated customs between EU countries as they erected common customs to the outside world.
    • The Eurozone replicates the United States by forming the world's largest market with a single currency.
    • Third, a single currency helps align political interests.
    • Euro did well until the 2008 Financial Crisis struck the world's economy.
    • The European Central Bank is the most independent central bank in the world.