Feature articles of WIDER Angle January 2012
January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The temperature is well below zero (minus 20oc). But we are now gaining light, having past the shortest day of the year in December. From the Editor's desk, READ MORE. WIDERAngle January 2012.
FEATURE ARTICLES
From the Editor’s Desk
Tony Addison, Full article.
Reflections on Transition: Twenty Years after the Fall of The Berlin Wall
Gérard Roland
The above titled book, published by Palgrave Macmillan 2012, brings together contributions from a conference that took place in Helsinki in September 2009. The conference involved a group of top scholars who have done research on the process of transition from socialism to capitalism over the last twenty years. Instead of looking back and reflecting one more time on transition policies from twenty years ago, as was the case for many commemorations, the conference focused instead on the long-run view of transition. Full article.
What Does Good Governance Mean?
Rachel M. Gisselquist
Almost all major development institutions today say that promoting good governance is an important part of their agendas. The outcome document of the recent 2011 Busan High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness further reflects these commitments. In a well-cited quote, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted that ‘good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development’. Full article.
Learning How to Promote Social Protection from Cambodia’s Garment Workers
Alisa DiCaprio
Innovations in social protection systems design have moved forward quickly on the supply-side over the past decade. But the same degree of creativity has not been applied to the equally critical demand-side constraints to social protection. Without channels through which the demand for social protection can be expressed to the provider of such protection, even the most finely-tuned system will not be sustainable in the long run. Full article.
The Macroeconomic Management of Foreign Aid
Tony Addison, Tseday Mekasha, Milla Nyyssölä, Lucy Scott, Finn Tarp, Tuuli Ylinen
To meet development objectives, aid recipients and their donor partners need to effectively manage the macroeconomic effects of aid. Aid can improve the economy's supply-side and raise growth. But if the macroeconomic impact of aid is not managed well it can distort and sometimes undermine growth. In December 2011, AERC and UNU-WIDER held a conference under the ReCom programme on the ‘Macroeconomic Management of Aid’, which aimed to clarify aid's macroeconomic effects. This knowledge will contribute to improving aid's growth impact and help with the scaling up of aid itself.
Full article.
Redefining Poverty in China and India: What Does This Mean for the Fight Against Global Poverty?
Part I
Tony Addison and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa
China and India are making immense strides in development. Growth in both countries has been impressive. But there is now much concern about whether impressive growth rates are yielding enough poverty reduction. The present debate about their poverty lines is a reflection of this. In this first part of a two-part article, we consider the definition of the poverty line in China and India. Part 2, in next month’s Angle, focuses on the key challenges facing these two Asian giants.
Full article.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Book Launch: Economies in Transition: The Long-Run View. Edited by Gérard Roland. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
To be held in London, UK TBA
Workshop: Second Project Workshop of The Political Economy of Food Price Policy, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 24 February 2012
Project meeting: Learning to Compete: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
22 February 2012
RECENT EVENTS
Aid, Growth and Macroeconomic Management: ReCom 1st Results Meeting held in Copenhagen, Denmark
27 January 2012
Presentation: Nordic-Baltic Multilateral Development Banks meeting, Helsinki, Finland 25 January 2012
UNU-WIDER Presentation What is Inclusive Growth.pdfSeminar: Development Effectiveness: New Ideas, New Challenges, Helsinki, Finland 19 January 2012
Seminar: Development Effectiveness: New Ideas, New Challenges, 19 January 2012.pdf
Seminar on 'Biofuels, Poverty and Gender in Mozambique and Tanzania', held at University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
18 January 2012
UNU-WIDER and HECER Seminar: Macroeconomics and Development seminar series: ‘It’s a Deals World: The Dynamics of Capitalism with Weak Institutions’, by Lant Pritchett of Harvard University.
14 December 2011. Watch the seminar on our UNU-WIDER channel.
Conference on Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture
Rabat, Morocco. 6 December 2011
Presentation by Finn Tarp: International Conference on Sustainable Development of Natural Resources in Africa. Held at UNU-INRA in Ghana. 5-7 December 2011
AERC and UNU-WIDER Conference: Macro-economic Management of Foreign Aid, Nairobi, Kenya 2 December 2011
Workshop: AERC and UNU-WIDER Curriculum on Development in the area of Climate Change, Nairobi, Kenya 1 December 2011
PUBLICATIONS
Economies in Transition: The Long-Run View
Edited by Gérard Roland
WIDER Working Papers 2012
WP/07 Impact of Foreign Aid on Economic Growth in Sierra Leone: Empirical Analysis
Philip Michael Kargbo WP/07
Transitional Justice and Aid
Sirkku K. Hellsten WP/06
How to Spend it: The organization of public spending and aid effectiveness
Paul Collier WP/05
Policy Regimes, Inequality, Poverty and Growth: The Chilean Experience, 1973-2010
Dante Contreras, and Ricardo Ffrench-Davis WP/04
Did Trade Openness Affect Income Distribution in Latin America? Evidence for the years 1980–2010
Miguel Székely, and Claudia Sámano WP/03
Contested Relationships: Women’s Economic and Social Empowerment, Insights from the Transfer of Material Assets in Bangladesh
Lucy Scott WP/02
Aid and Government Fiscal Behaviour: What Does the Evidence Say?
Oliver Morrissey WP/01
WIDER Working Papers 2011
Climate Variability and Agricultural Productivity in MENA region
Imed Drine WP/96
Aid and the Fiscal and Monetary Responses to Dutch Disease
Alan R. Roe WP/95
Uruguay’s Income Inequality and Political Regimes during 1981–2010
Verónica Amarante, Marco Colafranceschi, and Andrea Vigorito WP/94
Inequality in Education: Evidence for Latin America
Guillermo Cruces; Carolina García Domench; and Leonardo Gasparini WP/93
Climate Change and Infrastructure Investment in Developing Countries: The Case of Mozambique
Channing Arndt, Paul Chinowsky, Kenneth Strzepek and James Thurlow WP/92
Agriculture and Trade Opportunities for Tanzania: Past Volatility and Future Climate Change
Syud Amer Ahmed, Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Thomas W. Hertel, and William J. Martin WP/91
Power Ahead: Meeting Ethiopia’s Energy Needs under a Changing Climate
Paul Block and Kenneth Strzepek WP/90
A Dynamic General Equilibrium Analysis of Adaptation to Climate Change in Ethiopia
Sherman Robinson, Kenneth Strzepek, and Dirk Willenbockel WP/89
The Dynamics of Land Titling Regularization and Market Development
Sebastian Galiani and Ernesto Schargrodsky WP/88
Are Spatial Networks of Firms Random? Evidence from Vietnam Emma Howard, Carol Newman and Jacco Thijssen WP/87
A Stochastic Simulation Approach to Estimating the Economic Impacts of Climate Change in Bangladesh
James Thurlow, Paul Dorosh, and Winston Yu WP/86
Current Climate Variability and Future Climate Change: Estimated Growth and Poverty Impacts for Zambia
James Thurlow, Tingju Zhu, and Xinshen Diao WP/85
Information on all of WIDER's publications is available on our website: http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/
WIDER Angle newsletter
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