Finance & Development articles from March 2004

Finance & Development archives from March 2004

From the editor.
March 1, 2004... MOST LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES are unlikely to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for health by the target date of 2015 with current policies, institutions, and aid flows (as our December issue pointed out). This is important not just...

Adult education is key to poverty reduction.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... I agree with Shantayanan Devarajan and Ritva Reinikka (September 2003) that effective service delivery arrangements can help countries reach poor people and move toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is...

"Institutions, institutions, institutions".(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... I agree with the point made by Allan Meltzer (June 2003) about good institutions being the main factor behind the economic success of Hong Kong. Even now that Hong Kong is taking an economic beating and mainland China is surging ahead, Hong...

Feet of clay.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... While I enjoyed reading your articles about the IMF's ability to predict financial crises (December 2002), I had a sinking feeling about the prescriptions for addressing the worsening balance of payments, the troubling current account deficit,...

Workers' rights and the Washington Consensus.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... In his discussion of the Washington Consensus, John Williamson (September 2003) added income redistribution to his list of policies. However, "empowering the poor by giving them access to assets that will enable them to work their way out of...

Events coming up in 2004.(Calendar)
March 1, 2004... April 24-25, Washington, D.C. IMF--World Bank Spring Meetings April 25 Africa Malaria Day May 31 World No-Tobacco Day June 1-17, Geneva, Switzerland International Labor Conference 2004 June 8-10, Sea Island, Georgia Group of...

Continue the homework.(eliminating child labor)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Phasing out child labor by compensating poor families that encourage their children to stay at school could produce major economic gains for developing and transition economies, according to a study by the International Labor Office (ILO) in...

Final push to eradicate polio in six countries.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... There are only six remaining polio-endemic countries in the world: the Islamic State of Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria, and Pakistan. A renewed effort to immunize against this crippling disease and eradicate it for good is now being...

New fund to benefit poor countries under stress.
March 1, 2004... The World Bank has set up a $25 million trust fund to support reform in low-income countries under stress--countries that have very weak policies and institutions. This diverse group of countries ranges from Sierra Leone, which is emerging from...

Camdessus spotlights water "injustice".(Michel Camdessus)(chairman of World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Former IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus says the dream of providing clean water for all is attainable but requires a doubling of development assistance earmarked for water needs. Speaking at a conference organized by the Asian Development...

Render unto Caesar.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Money and Sovereignty, an exhibit developed in cooperation with the National Museum of American History, opens at the IMF Center in Washington on April 26. The exhibit, which features currency from many countries, will focus on what money has...

Plus ca change ...(30 Years Ago In F&D)
March 1, 2004... "The distribution of income and wealth in developing countries has recently become a matter of great concern to all those interested in development. In part, this new concern reflects increased awareness of the social and political costs of...

Getting there first: an economist's lifelong study of the effects of taxes and social insurance.(People In Economics)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... MARTIN FELDSTEIN graduated in 1961 with a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and secured admission to Harvard Medical School. But, desiring to see a bit of the world, he headed instead to Oxford University and asked the medical school to...

Checking up on health.(Picture This)(developing countries)
March 1, 2004... IN MOST parts of the world, people are healthier and living longer, thanks to improved health services and living conditions and the more widespread use of immunization, antibiotics, and better contraceptives. Although this trend is likely to...

Health, wealth, and welfare: new evidence coupled with a wider perspective suggest sizable economic returns to better health.
March 1, 2004... THE LAST 150 years has witnessed a global transformation in human health that has led to people living longer, healthier, more productive lives. While having profound consequences for population size and structure, better health has also...

Making health care accountable: why performance-based funding of health services in developing countries is getting more attention.
March 1, 2004... DEVELOPING countries and their international partners are increasingly adopting methods of financing health care activities in developing countries that link the availability of funding to concrete, measurable results on the ground. Such...

New antimalarial drugs: biology and economics meet: a global public goods commission looks at ways to stop or slow the spread of drug-resistant strains of malaria.
March 1, 2004... MALARIA has been and remains one of the greatest scourges of humanity. Its geographical range is wide, even today. It is a particularly devastating health problem in Africa, especially between the Sahara Desert and South Africa. At one time,...

Medicines, patents, and TRIPS: has the intellectual property pact opened a Pandora's box for the pharmaceuticals industry?
March 1, 2004... IF YOU HAD asked the average policy wonk in the field of finance or development about TRIPS, even until a few years ago, you would probably have elicited a quizzical expression of bemusement, betraying mild condescension: how important can that...

Trading places: measuring income mobility.(Back To Basics)
March 1, 2004... HOW MUCH income mobility is there in today's economies? A high degree of mobility would imply, in the words of Columbia University's Jagdish Bhagwati, that capitalism's "inequalities then become tolerable, not because the rich deny themselves...

Global finance: past and present: policymakers in two eras of globalization faced the same "trilemma" of difficult policy trade-offs.
March 1, 2004... DESPITE occasional manifestations of disappointment and distrust, the globalization of economic life is now almost taken for granted. Nowhere has this trend been more pervasive than in global financial markets in the past few decades. Capital...

The continuing bipolar conundrum: some countries are abandoning intermediate exchange rate regimes although the trend is not as strong as might be expected.
March 1, 2004... THE MAJOR currency crises of the past decade have led many observers to associate pegged exchange rates, particularly soft pegs, with proneness to crises. From the European exchange rate mechanism turmoil of 1992-93 to the crises in Mexico...

Are U.S. households living beyond their means? Consumer spending, household wealth, and real estate prices in the United States.
March 1, 2004... THE BOOM in consumer spending, now in its 12th year, has weathered many adverse shocks that have hit the U.S. economy in recent years, including terrorist attacks and heightened security concerns, a sharp decline in equity prices and the 2001...

Evaluating the evaluator.(Independent Evaluation Office (IEO))
March 1, 2004... FOR MANY years, friends and critics of the IMF urged it to solicit independent assessments of its policies and operations. In the late 1990s, the IMF appointed three groups of outside experts to appraise its programs for low-income countries,...

Appraising the IMF's performance: a review of the first three studies by the new Independent Evaluation Office.(International Monetary Fund)
March 1, 2004... DOES THE IMF adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to fiscal policy in countries that seek its assistance, requiring retrenchment in every instance? Were the fiscal provisions of IMF programs responsible for the large output contractions in the...

Blunt approach does the trick.
March 1, 2004... I WAS an early supporter of independent evaluation of the IMF's programs and performance. It seemed important, not just to answer outside critics who grew more vociferous during the 1990s, but also to help the institution respond to new and...

Enhancing the learning culture.(Independent Evaluation Office)
March 1, 2004... ONE OF the major purposes of the IEO is to enhance the "learning culture" of the IMF. Those who laid the foundations of the IEO--and I was one of them--obviously had in mind not only IMF staff and management but also the Executive Directors...

Credible start, untested impact.(Independent Evaluation Office)
March 1, 2004... THE ESTABLISHMENT of the IEO was an extremely important step in efforts to increase the IMF's transparency and accountability. The previous practice of internal review--supplemented by the occasional external review--was widely seen by the...

Globalization for one-stop shoppers.(In Defense of Globalization)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Jagdish Bhagwati In Defense of Globalization Oxford University Press, New York, 2004, 304 pp., $28 (cloth). THE NUMBER of books on dieting and weight loss still outnumber those on globalization, but there is no shortage of the latter....

A compact but unconvincing case.(Restructuring Sovereign Debt: The Case for Ad Hoc Machinery)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Lex Rieffel Restructuring Sovereign Debt The Case for Ad Hoc Machinery Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2003, 368 pp., $39.95 (cloth). ONE INEVITABLY picks up a book with certain expectations, as I did when I began this...

Another world economic outlook is possible?(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Ann Pettifor (editor) Real World Economic Outlook The Legacy of Globalization: Debt and Deflation Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York, 2003, 50 [pounds sterling] (cloth), 16.99 [pounds sterling] (paper). ...

The United States: near-term prospects for the U.S. economy are favorable, but the fiscal deficit poses long-term challenges.(Country Focus)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... The U.S. recovery has been led by household consumption... (four-quarter percent change) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Growth of labor productivity has surged, which should help support real wage growth. (five-year average growth;...

How useful are clever solutions? Why fashionable proposals often don't work, as in the case of a new approach to dollarized debt and "original sin".(Straight Talk)
March 1, 2004... KNOTTY PROBLEMS abound in economics. For example, how can the poor obtain access to credit, or how can international economic policies help to cut short the duration of kleptocratic, despotic regimes? And clever solutions keep bubbling up. Give...