Partnerships for the Goals
What Does Excess Bank Liquidity Say About the Loan Market in Less Developed Countries?
Art is Long, Life is Short
Between the many resolutions, speeches, reports and other documents that are produced each year, the United Nations is awash in text. It is an ongoing challenge to create a coherent and useful picture of this corpus. In particular, there is an interest in measuring how the work of the United Nations system aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is a need for a scalable, objective, and consistent way to measure how similar any given publication is to each of the 17 SDGs. This paper explains a proof-of-concept process for building such a system using machine learning algorithms. By creating a model of the 17 SDGs it is possible to measure how similar the contents of individual publications are to each of the goals — their SDG Score. This paper also shows how this system can be used in practice by computing the SDG Scores for a limited selection of DESA publications and providing some analytics.
The Terrible Simplifers
Industrial Policy and Growth
Insurance, Credit and Safety Nets for the Poor in a World of Risk
Labour Markets Trends, Financial Globalization and the Current Crisis in Developing Countries
Labour Market Flexibility and Decent Work
International Tax Cooperation and Innovative Development Finance
Lessons for Today from Past Periods of Rapid Technological Change
We provide a history of past periods of rapid technological change starting from the Industrial Revolution continuing up to today. We find that it takes decades for technological breakthroughs to make a difference to the aggregate economy. The reason for this delay is that to realize the value of these breakthroughs requires complementary investments. Second, for good or for bad, government has played an important role in facilitating these transitions through both investments in physical infrastructure and legal reforms. We also emphasize that because technological breakthroughs are difficult to predict, the responses of governments are necessarily improvisational.
Modernizing the Informal Sector
Super-Cycles of Commodity Prices since the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Market, Social Cohesion, and Democracy
COVID-19 Pandemic Deals a Huge Blow to the Manufacturing Exports From LDCs
The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic poses a significant economic challenge to LDCs that rely heavily on exporting manufactured goods, particularly clothing and apparel, amid global demand and supply-side shocks. Clothing and apparel exports have been key drivers of formal employment, wage growth and poverty reduction in a few countries, with the share of working poor falling from about 45 per cent to 15 per cent of the workforce in these LDCs during the past two decades. A prolonged global slump will likely reverse the gains in poverty reduction and undermine structural transformation of these economies. While it is highly unlikely that these LDCs will face a debt crisis—given their low levels of external debt—the likelihood of a balance of payments crisis looms large. Additional liquidity and credit from multilateral sources will remain critical not only to avoid a balance of payments crisis but also to prevent increases in poverty and the reversal of years of development gains.
COVID-19 and the Need for Action on Mental Health
Although the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis is, in the first instance, a physical health crisis, it has the seeds of a major mental health crisis as well, if action is not taken. Good mental health is critical to the functioning of society at the best of times. It must be front and centre of every country’s response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The mental health and wellbeing of whole societies have been severely impacted by this crisis and are priorities to be addressed urgently. Rapid implementation of recommended actions will be essential to ensure people and societies are better protected from the mental health impact of COVID-19. The e-book for this policy brief has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.
Assessing the Success of Microinsurance Programmes in Meeting the Insurance Needs of the Poor
COVID-19 in an Urban World
The remarkable growth of cities in recent decades has intensified a number of humanity’s most pressing challenges. It has also presented many of our greatest opportunities to protect people, prosperity and planet. COVID-19 (coronavirus) has laid bare – and indeed heightened – both these challenges and these opportunities. With an estimated 90 percent of all reported COVID-19 cases, urban areas have become the epicentre of the pandemic. In the near term, for many cities, the COVID-19 health crisis has expanded to a crisis of urban access, urban equity, urban finance, safety, joblessness, public services, infrastructure and transport, all of which are dis-proportionally affecting the most vulnerable in society.
COVID-19: A Speedy and Balanced Recovery of Europe will Remain Critical for the World to Return to the Trajectory of Sustainable Development
A speedy, timely and balanced recovery from the crisis will be critical not only for preserving European solidarity, but also for ensuring that the world quickly returns to the trajectory of sustainable development. The fiscal response to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has been large but uneven across countries, with a few countries with favorable fiscal positions able to roll out large stimulus packages. The European Union (EU) member states agreed to a large fiscal package — 3% of EU GDP — and continued with discussions about issuing a common European bond to lower the borrowing costs of the hardest hit economies and assist their recovery.
Debt and COVID-19: A Global Response in Solidarity
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, public external debt in many developing countries has increased. The increasing indebtedness reflected the funding required to finance domestic investment-savings gaps. It was also encouraged by the long period of unusually low international interest rates and unprecedented levels of global liquidity associated with quantitative easing. Developing countries, including least developed countries (LDCs), increased access to commercial financing. Lending by non-Paris Club official creditors also increased. The negative economic, social and financial impacts will likely outlast the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and hit hardest poor, developing and highly indebted countries. Beyond dealing with the immediate pandemic, additional resources will also be needed to stimulate demand, regenerate jobs and restore supply capacity to pre-crisis levels, let alone to achieve the SDGs. The e-book for this policy brief has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.
Constraints to Achieving the MDGs Through Domestic Resource Mobilization
COVID-19 and Human Rights: We are all in this Together
Human rights are key in shaping the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic response, both for the public health emergency and the broader impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. Human rights put people centre-stage. Responses that are shaped by and respect human rights result in better outcomes in beating the pandemic, ensuring healthcare for everyone and preserving human dignity. But they also focus our attention on who is suffering most, why, and what can be done about it. They prepare the ground now for emerging from this crisis with more equitable and sustainable societies, development and peace. The e-book for this policy brief has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.