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UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) Working Papers
The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) Working Papers aim to stimulate discussion and critical comment on the broad range of economic, social and environmental issues associated with the United Nations Development Agenda.
ISSN (online):
25206656
Language:
Inglés
175
resultados
121 - 140 of 175 resultados
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Climate Change and Sustainable Development
Authors: Tariq Banuri and Hans OpschoorFecha de la publicación: octubre 2007Más MenosThis paper argues that in the future the primary focus of policy research and global agreements should be the de-carbonization of economic development. Consequently, instead of treating climate stabilization and economic development as separate and equal, the strategy should be to re-integrate the two global policy goals, in part by separating responsibility (and funding) from action. This will require an approach that goes beyond Kyoto. The paper invokes the example of the Manhattan Project to argue for a massive, globally funded public investment program for the deployment of renewable energy technologies in developing countries.
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Governance, Economic Growth and Development Since the 1960s
Autor: Mushtaq H. KhanFecha de la publicación: agosto 2007Más MenosLiberal economists have developed a framework of good governance as market-enhancing governance, focusing on governance capabilities that reduce transaction costs and enable markets to work more efficiently. In contrast, heterodox economists have stressed the role of growth-enhancing governance, which focuses on governance capacities to overcome entrenched market failures in allocating assets, acquiring productivity-enhancing technologies and maintaining political stability in contexts of rapid social transformation. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but current policy exclusively focuses on the former, and ignores the strong empirical and historical evidence supporting the latter to the detriment of the growth prospects of poor countries.
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Industrial Policy and Growth
Autor: Helen ShapiroFecha de la publicación: agosto 2007Más MenosThe paper highlights how the rationales and instruments of industrial policy have changed since the 1960s. It finds that theories of industrialization have come full circle, as many of the assumptions behind the market failure paradigm have made a comeback. The policy implications of these theories, however, have not been similarly resurrected. It makes an explicit comparison between the strategies of East Asia and Latin America, and reviews the explanations for their divergent performance. It identifies a “back to the future” quality of Latin America’s situation, pointing to the region’s balance of payments constraint and dependence on commodity-like industrial products.
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Openness and Growth
Autor: Francisco RodriguezFecha de la publicación: agosto 2007Más MenosThis paper discusses recent evidence regarding the existence of a cross-country empirical relationship between openness to international trade and economic growth. I discuss the empirical contributions of Warner (2003), Dollar and Kraay (2002), and Wacziarg and Welch (2003), and argue that these studies fail to convincingly establish a positive link between trade and growth. I also discuss the 1990-2003 experience and show that growth does not display a significant correlation with any measure of trade openness over this period.
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What We Do and Don’t Know about Trade Liberalization and Poverty Reduction
Autor: Rob VosFecha de la publicación: agosto 2007Más MenosStrong opinions about the impact of globalization on poverty are not always backed by robust factual evidence. As argued in this paper, however, it is not all that easy to lay our hands on ‘robust’ facts. Quantitative analyses of trade liberalization appear highly sensitive to basic modelling and parameter assumptions. Altering these could turn the expectation that, for instance, Africa’s poor stand to gain from further trade opening under the Doha Round into one in which they would stand to lose. Most studies agree though that trade opening probably adds to aggregate welfare, but gains are small and unevenly distributed.
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Have Collapses in Infrastructure Spending Led to Cross-Country Divergence in Per Capita GDP?
Autor: Francisco RodriguezFecha de la publicación: julio 2007Más MenosThis paper explores whether the post-1980 decline in infrastructure investment in developing countries is a source of growing disparities in world per capita GDP. I start by reviewing the literature on the infrastructure-productivity link, arguing that a balanced reading of previous studies points to a significant effect of infrastructure provision on productivity. I then empirically study whether retrenchments in infrastructure provision have played a role in growing disparities using a data set of country-level infrastructure stocks for 121 countries since 1960. Cutbacks in infrastructure investment appear to be at most a minor cause of growing divergence in per capita incomes.
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Growth, Employment and Poverty
Autor: Azizur Rahman KhanFecha de la publicación: julio 2007Más MenosThis Working Paper explores the role of employment growth in determining the effect of a given rate of economic growth on the rate of change in poverty. It is based on the findings of 16 country case studies recently carried out by the United Nations Development Programme and the International Labour Organization. The principal finding of the paper is that the rate of poverty reduction has invariably been lower than what it potentially should have been and the main reason for this is both the low employment intensity of growth and, with few exceptions, low overall growth itself.
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A Compendium of Policy Instruments to Enhance Financial Stability and Debt Management in Emerging Market Economies
Autor: Ronald U. MendozaFecha de la publicación: julio 2007Más MenosDrawing on available theory and evidence, this paper attempts to identify some key factors contributing to international financial instability to develop a taxonomy of policy instruments to enhance financial stability and debt management in emerging market economies. The purpose is to relate each instrument to particular aspects of the broader policy challenge,thus clarifying differences and/or similarities among instruments and proposals. The analysis suggests instruments that could help increase the efficiency of risk management strategies(such as growth- or GDP-indexed bonds) and enhance the effectiveness of debt management,growth and development policies (such as a stability and social investment facility).
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Labour Market Flexibility and Decent Work
Autor: Gerry RodgersFecha de la publicación: julio 2007Más MenosThis paper reviews evidence from both industrialized and developing countries on the relationship between labour market flexibility and employment. It is argued that the notion of flexibility and its impact is often oversimplified. Th e evidence, such as it is, does not provide much support for the view that greater flexibility results in higher employment. Th ere is more evidence for an impact on the distribution of employment among different groups of the population, but also effects which vary widely between countries. Flexibility needs to be considered within a wider framework of policies and institutions to promote decent work.
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Rethinking the Informal Economy
Autor: Martha Alter ChenFecha de la publicación: julio 2007Más MenosThis paper explores the relationship of the informal economy to the formal economy and the formal regulatory environment. It begins with a discussion of the concept of the informal economy and its size, composition, and segmentation. It then discusses the linkages between the informal economy and the formal economy and the formal regulatory environment. The conclusion suggests why and how more equitable linkages between the informal economy and the formal economy should be promoted through an appropriate inclusive policy and regulatory environment.
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Inequality in India: A Survey of Recent Trends
Authors: Parthapratim Pal and Jayati GhoshFecha de la publicación: julio 2007Más MenosThis paper analyses the nature and causes of the patterns of inequality and poverty in India. Since the economic liberalization in the early 1990s, the evidence suggests increasing inequality (in both spatial and vertical terms) as well as persistent poverty. The macroeconomic policies possibly responsible for these trends include—fiscal tightening, regressive tax policies and expenditure cuts; financial sector reform that reduced institutional credit flow to small producers and agriculturalists; liberalization of rules for foreign and domestic investment, leading to more regional imbalance and skewed investment patterns, and trade liberalization, which has affected livelihoods and employment generation.
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A Growth Model for a Two-Sector Economy with Endogenous Productivity
Autor: Codrina RadaFecha de la publicación: julio 2007Más MenosA growth model is developed for an open dual economy. The economy expands due to a higher growth rate of labour productivity in the modern sector through the Kaldor-Verdoorn channel and higher effective demand through a Keynesian channel. The model incorporates a retardation mechanism affecting the slopes of productivity and output growth schedules as labour surplus and economies of scale diminish. A wage or profit-led regime and initial conditions may give rise to: de-industrialization in terms of both output and employment; a growth trap sustaining a situation of structural heterogeneity; or sustainable employment and adequate output and productivity growth.
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The Conflict-Growth Nexus and the Poverty of Nations
Autor: Syed Mansoob MurshedFecha de la publicación: junio 2007Más MenosLack of growth limits poverty reduction while poverty increases conflict risk. Institutional failure and other factors seem to cause both growth failure and civil war. The greed explanation for conflict is common in cross-country econometric investigation, despite its dubious role in directly causing civil war. The relationship between natural resource revenues and conflict onset works through other mechanisms, such as a weakening social contract and withering state capacity. The grievance explanation for contemporary civil war is supported by detailed case studies where horizontal inequality is important. Economic deconstruction following war should therefore be pro-poor and address horizontal inequalities engendering conflict.
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Modernizing the Informal Sector
Autor: Victor E. TokmanFecha de la publicación: junio 2007Más MenosThe multiplicity of policies proposed to support the informal sector reflects the lack of a common definition. Although they may produce positive effects, these are limited and fail to constitute a comprehensive strategic approach. The different interpretations in the absence of a common definition as well as the strategies emerging from them are reviewed. The identification of informality with illegality and labour precariousness, although conceptually related, is often misleading. Lastly, it explores a strategic option to regulate the informal sector, tracing the different approaches to formalizing informal activities, to facilitate their full integration into the modernization process.
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Developing Countries, Donor Leverage, and Access to Bird Flu Vaccines
Authors: Chan Chee Khoon and Gilles De WildtFecha de la publicación: junio 2007Más MenosIn early 2007, the Indonesian government decided to withhold its bird flu virus samples from WHO’s collaborating centres pending a new global mechanism for virus sharing that had better terms for developing countries. The 60th World Health Assembly subsequently resolved to establish an international stockpile of avian flu vaccines, and mandated WHO to formulate mechanisms and guidelines for equitable access to these vaccines. Are there analogous opportunities for study volunteers or donors of biological materials in clinical trials or other research settings to exercise corresponding leverage to advance health equity?
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Transforming the Developmental Welfare States in East Asia
Autor: Huck-ju KwonFecha de la publicación: junio 2007Más MenosThis article attempts to explain changes and continuity in the developmental welfare states in Korea and Taiwan Province of China (hereafter Taiwan) within the East Asian context. It first elaborates two strands of welfare developmentalism (selective vs. inclusive), and establishes that the welfare state in those countries fell into the selective category of developmental welfare states before the Asian economic crisis of 1997. Secondly, this paper argues that the policy reform toward an inclusive welfare state in Korea and Taiwan was triggered by the need for structural reform in the economy. Lastly, this paper argues that the idea of an inclusive developmental welfare state should be explored in the wider context of economic and social development.
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A Counter-Cyclical Framework for a Development-Friendly International Financial Architecture
Authors: José Antonio Ocampo and Stephany Griffith-JonesFecha de la publicación: junio 2007Más MenosThe major task of a development-friendly international financial architecture is to mitigate procyclical effects of financial markets and open “policy space” for counter-cyclical macroeconomic policies in the developing world. Th is paper explores a series of policy instruments for this purpose: counter-cyclical prudential regulatory and supervisory frameworks; market mechanisms that better distribute the risk faced by developing countries through the business cycle; multilateral instruments that encourage more stable private flows; and better provision of counter-cyclical official liquidity. It also suggests that regional macroeconomic consultation, and common reserve funds or swap arrangements among developing countries can play a role in this regard.
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Central Banks as Agents of Employment Creation
Autor: Gerald EpsteinFecha de la publicación: junio 2007Más MenosEmployment creation has dropped off the direct agenda of most central banks. The so-called “global best practice” approach to central banking has not focused on economic growth or employment generation but rather on keeping inflation in the low single digits. However, the policy record shows that employment generation and economic growth are often not by-products of inflation focused central bank policy. This chapter argues that there should be a return to the historical norm of central bank policy in which employment creation and more rapid economic growth join inflation and stabilization more generally as key goals of central bank policy. Supporting this argument, the chapter summarizes major lessons of a multi-country research project undertaken by an international team of economists which show that, within the constraints of contemporary economic conditions, there are viable alternatives to inflation targeting that can focus more on important social, real sector outcomes such as employment generation and poverty eduction.
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Regional Social Policy
Authors: Bob Deacon, Isabel Ortiz and Sergei ZelenevFecha de la publicación: junio 2007Más MenosThis paper argues why countries should give priority to developing cross-border regional social policies. The first part presents the conceptual case for regional social policies in terms of how the social dimension of regionalism can provide an alternative to the current pattern of globalization. The second presents the concept and dimensions of regional social policies. The third part reviews progress to date, which suggests that the time is right to pursue this agenda. The paper closes with some institutional issues related to how regional social policy might be advanced, including options for financing regional social policies.
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Constraints to Achieving the MDGs Through Domestic Resource Mobilization
Authors: Rob Vos, Marco V. Sánchez Cantillo and Keiji InoueFecha de la publicación: mayo 2007Más MenosThe present paper focuses on the role of domestic resource mobilization for financing poverty reduction strategies. Policy makers should be aware of important macroeconomic trade-offs associated with MDG strategies financed from tax increases or domestic borrowing. The trade-offs are largely intertemporal: can poor and middle-income countries absorb the initial financing costs in order to achieve expected gains in productivity and human development over time? This calls for a dynamic economy-wide framework to identify the importance of such trade-offs. The paper presents such a framework and illustrates its usefulness in applications for Costa Rica and Ecuador.
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