Finance & Development articles from December 2003

Finance & Development archives from December 2003

From the editor.
December 1, 2003... IN SEPTEMBER 2000, at the Millenium Summit, government leaders committed with great fanfare to meet a set of Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. These are specific, quantitative targets for progress in fighting poverty and improving...

Deeper into the institutions debate.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I read the articles in the grouping "Institutions in Development" (June 2003) hoping to find some thinking outside the box of extractive economic growth, the sustainable development oxymoron. Seeking economic prosperity does not work well in...

No global middle class.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... In the September issue of F&D, Prakash Loungani discusses various measures of inequality. He rightly concludes that inequality measured by looking at cross-country mean incomes (or, rather, GDP per capita) has been rising over the past quarter...

Why isn't Africa growing?(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... In "Unlocking Growth in Africa" (June 2003), Kenneth Rogoff's first recipe for growth is that "African countries must become more open to trade and foreign direct investment, and their efforts must be reciprocated." Trade and investments are...

IMF should blow the whistle.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Kenneth Rogoff correctly suggests crises that the IMF's future hinges on its being more candid in its country assessments, even if that sometimes means bringing forward a crisis that might have been delayed ("More Cheerleading or More...

The World Bank goes "continental".
December 1, 2003... The World Bank has appointed a new Chief Economist to replace Nicholas Stem, who held the post for the past three years. Francois Bourguignon, who is known for his work on poverty and inequality, says that he wants the World Bank to focus more...

Rethinking the United Nations.
December 1, 2003... United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a blue-ribbon panel to review the role of the UN in the twenty-first century. The panel will analyze future challenges to international peace and security and, on that basis, recommend...

Events comming up in 2004.(Calendar)
December 1, 2003... January 21-25, Davos, Switzerland World Economic Forum Annual Meeting January 28-31, Washington, D.C. National Conference of the World Affairs Councils of America: U.S. and Europe: Partners or Rivals? April 16-30, New York, New York...

Get help from FIRST.
December 1, 2003... A country that is eligible to borrow or receive grants from the World Bank can now get help in building its financial sector. Technical assistance is available under a program known as FIRST--the Financial Sector Reform and Strengthening...

Rebuilding Iraq.
December 1, 2003... Donors and international financial institutions pledged to spend more than $33 billion to help rebuild Iraq at a donors conference held in Madrid on October 24. The funds, to be provided in the form of loans and grants, include possible...

More rice for the world.
December 1, 2003... The United Nations has launched a major drive to increase the production of rice. In announcing "the International Year of Rice 2004," Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said that "almost a...

Accounting for the environment.
December 1, 2003... A new handbook, Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting 2003, reflects a coordinated drive by the United Nations, Eurostat, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to measure the...

An unchanging paradox.(30 Years Ago In F&D)
December 1, 2003... "It was one of the paradoxes of the modern world that developed countries lent to developing countries but maintained trade barriers which prevented them from acquiring the means to repay, said Mr. Frank D. Crean, Governor for Australia." ...

Hearing the dogs bark.(People In Economics)
December 1, 2003... HERNANDO DE SOTO has star appeal. He is on the mustcall list of many world leaders. He is feted by the press and funded by international development agencies. His think tank in Peru has produced some of the most influential work in development...

Falling behind?
December 1, 2003... A MOTHER, wrapped in a green shawl, sits with her child on a dirt path outside the Ministry of Finance in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. The child chews on a small piece of bread as the mother collects coins from passersby. Inside the...

Getting there: how to accelerate progress toward the Millennium Development Goals.
December 1, 2003... WITH JUST 12 years left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, see Box 1), a greater sense of urgency is needed by all sides if the targets are to be met. Many developing countries are making substantial progress toward the MDGs as...

Avoiding another debt trap: low-income countries need a sustainable borrowing strategy if they are to achieve development goals.
December 1, 2003... LOW-INCOME countries face serious challenges in meeting their development objectives, embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by world leaders in 2000. Unless they can accelerate economic growth, many of these countries will...

Absorbing shocks.
December 1, 2003... HURRICANE Mitch struck Honduras in October 1998, causing catastrophic floods and landslides. The human costs were enormous: over 13,000 people died or disappeared and another 12,500 were injured; about half a million people lost their homes....

Using fiscal policy to spur growth: when reducing fiscal deficits makes sense for low-income countries.
December 1, 2003... ONE OF the central tenets of macroeconomics is that fiscal policy can be effective in stimulating aggregate demand and reviving a stagnant economy. At the same time, a growing body of research--based primarily on industrial countries--suggests...

Overcoming the obstacles: what will it take to lift the world's neediest out of poverty?
December 1, 2003... WITH the international community agreed on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the debate is now focusing on how to raise the resources necessary to help poor countries achieve them. Aid in itself will not be enough to make substantial...

The global war on poverty: who's winning.(Back to Basics)
December 1, 2003... "THE U.S. government declared war on poverty, and poverty won," former U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously quipped, referring to the limited progress in reducing U.S. poverty in the aftermath of President Lyndon Johnson's 1964 "war...

The world's forest balancing economic demands and conservation.(Picture This)
December 1, 2003... EACH year, forests covering an area the size of Portugal are converted to other uses, mainly agriculture. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, in its Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000--Main Report, estimates that during...

Bridging the "Great Divide": poorly developed financial systems in the CIS-7 countries may jeopardize their sustained growth.
December 1, 2003... "A growing and deepening divide has opened up between transition economies where economic development has taken off and those caught in a vicious cycle of institutional backwardness and macroeconomic instability. This 'Great Divide' is visible...

Beyond the great wall: why some see China's integration into the global trading system as a competitive threat but others, including global consumers, see it as a boon.
December 1, 2003... AFTER a long period of isolation, China's visibility within the international trading system has increased dramatically over the past two decades. Its share of world trade has risen from less than 1 percent in 1979 to 5 1/2 percent in 2003....

What's behind foreign investment in China?
December 1, 2003... Yasheng Huang Selling China Foreign Direct Investment During the Reform Era Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003, 406 pp., $50 (cloth). CHINA'S ABILITY to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) is generally taken as a sign of...

The perils of foreign capital?
December 1, 2003... David Woodward The Next Crisis? Direct and Equity Investment in Developing Countries Zed Books, New York, 2001, xiv + 240 pp., $69 (cloth), $25 (paper). THIS BOOK takes on international financial institutions for their advocacy of...

Food fight!
December 1, 2003... Jack Hollander The Real Environmental Crisis Why Poverty, Not Affluence, is the Environment's Number One Enemy University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003, 251 pp., $27.50 (cloth). Lester Brown Plan B: Rescuing a PLanet Under...

Proving poverty.
December 1, 2003... Orazlo Attanaslo and Miguel Szekely (editors) Portrait of the Poor An Assets-Based Approach Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, 2001, 272 pp., $24.95 (paper). "THE RICH are very different from you and me," F. Scott Fitzgerald...

Mitigating monetary tensions.
December 1, 2003... David M. Andrews, C. Randall Henning, and Louis W. Pauly (editors) Governing the World's Money Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 2002, 222 pp., $35.00 (cloth). "WALL STREET BANKERS and the New York Federal Reserve were at the...

Disinflation: an unsung benefit of globalization? If the trend toward greater globalization were to reverse, inflation might return.(Straight Talk)
December 1, 2003... GLOBAL INFLATION has dropped from around 30 percent a year in the early 1990s to under 4 percent today (see chart). No wonder so many central bankers are riding high. Inflation-therapy gurus claim to have found the magic elixir that solves the...