Development Blogs.com

This blog comments on the final report of the Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, raising five key questions that need to be answered in the debate on health equity....(read more)...

The global financial crisis is bound to have a major impact on developing countries, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) having downgraded its growth forecasts for 2009 for both developed and developing countries. With two key global events coming up (the G20 crisis summit and the Doha Finance for Development meeting), this blog asks how deep a fall developing countries can expect, and what should be done about it. ...(read more)...

Reshaping Economic Geography, the World Development Report for 2009, is launched today. The World Bank’s flagship report puts place and space very firmly in the development spotlight, outlining how countries can speed up their own development by ‘reshaping economic geography’....(read more)...

Climate change, peak oil and all the other unfolding crises associated with pollution and resource depletion are all symptoms of one problem. There has been a fundamental change in the relationship between people and the Earth. We no longer have new frontiers to expand into when resources get scarce or our waste becomes intolerable. This change marks the maturity of the human species. Well-being now requires an equally fundamental change in how we manage our societies. As long as the goal of expanding production and consumption is considered legitimate, we are in danger of overshooting planetary limits and collapsing. When sustainability gains legitimacy, as our primary goal, the possibility will emerge for evolving a mature social form, capable of long-term well-being. It is a...

This blog argues that the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) need to be well informed, deal proactively with legitimate criticism, and ensure stakeholder buy-in. Three features of the EPAs stand out: their complexity; their potential impact; and the fact that there has been almost no informed discussion of their potential impact based on independent analysis. News on the EPAs will be coming in at erratic intervals and in varying forms for the foreseeable future. The blog invites visitors to the ODI website to subscribe to updates on the EPA process....(read more)...

The global financial crisis has caused a considerable economic slowdown in developed countries such as the UK, Germany, France and the USA. The USA and UK face the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s. By contrast, the Malawian finance minister told me last week that he projects growth in Malawi of more than 8% this year. Nigeria is also projected to see economic growth of 8%, and China 9%. Will all developing countries be isolated from the downturn in the west? If not, which countries are at risk and how might the global financial crisis affect them?...(read more)...

Can developing countries isolate themselves from the financial turbulence in the developed world? Will the crunch negate any achievements made on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in New York this week?...(read more)...

Evo Morales has jumped over yet another hurdle this weekend. He has managed to secure a new vote of confidence from among the social movements and grassroots that constitute the loose coalition that is his political platform. This backing is what he needs to further advance his drive to transform Bolivia into a socialist state. But this is also an unfortunate step further into a vicious cycle of ideological polarisation from which, Latin American history says, one can only leave through violence and the absolute rejection of the past....(read more)...

The trade talks have collapsed over the issue of Special Safeguard Measures (or SSMs) in agriculture. This was not even among the hottest negotiating issues. This suggests that the talks could (and probably would) have collapsed over any other (more controversial) issues. The bottom line is that the (real) interest for a far-reaching agreement to liberalise multilateral trade regimes has quickly been vanishing in the face of faltering global economy....(read more)...

Is the first WTO Director-General Peter Sutherland right to call the collapse of the trade talks a 'disaster'? It would certainly have been better for world trade, world income, and most people in developing countries if the Doha negotiations had succeeded in producing a significant liberalisation in trade rules. But it has been clear for at least five years that a 'big' agreement was not possible, so the claims that several hundred billion dollars worth of potential world trade gains have been lost this week are not realistic. ...(read more)...

The question of whether democracy helps or hinders economic growth is a hotly debated one today. In a recent Foreign Policy article, Professor Yasheng Huang of MIT addresses this issue in the Asian context. The most obvious case study that comes to mind is the China-India comparison that supposedly gives the former an authoritarian edge of fast economic growth. Many believe that… Democracies are peaceful, representative—and terrible at boosting an economy. Or at least that’s the conventional wisdom in Asia, where for years growth in India’s sprawling democracy has been humbled by China’s efficient, state-led boom. But India’s newfound economic success flips that notion on its head. Could it be that democracy is good for growth after all? If so, China better watch its back....

As China and Myanmar’s (Burma’s) death tolls from the recent calamities continue to climb, Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute offers an interesting perspective on the role that a human hand has in the extent of damage caused by natural disasters. Of course nobody can stop a cyclone or prevent an earthquake. But the high number of casualties in the aftermath of such disasters is at least to some degree man-made. China’s death toll stands at 41,000 and Burma now has staggering 134,000 people dead or missing. Some part of those figures can obviously be attributed to the shortcomings in the government-managed rescue efforts. But longer-term governmental policies may be as much – if not more – to blame. The poverty that exposes people to nature’s dangers also kills. And...

As governance indicators have proliferated in recent years, so has their use and the controversy that surrounds them. As more and more voices are pointing out, existing indicators – many of them developed and launched in the 1990s – have a number of flaws. This is particularly disquieting at a time when governance is at the very top of the development agenda. ...(read more)...

The word "crisis" is much abused. But the current food price crisis constitutes a genuine emergency. Urgency in tackling it is essential....(read more)...

Against the backdrop of the upcoming local elections on April 8 and the arrest of over 300 members of the country’s biggest opposition group, Egypt is at a critical juncture along its path towards political and economic development with contradictions that are pulling this most populous country in the region in critically opposite directions. With 40 percent of its population living below the poverty line, the Egyptian economy is witnessing consistent growth and is attracting billions of dollars in foreign direct investment. This remarkable dichotomy is dangerously pushing the country along a perilous tight rope between either becoming the success story of economic reform in the region or driving the country into failure and instability. At a time when the global economy is teetering...

The 2008 G8 Summit in Toyako, Japan will be particularly significant because there are big issues on the international development agenda that require firm G8 commitments to be made in 2008; and yet the risk of not delivering on these agendas has never been higher....(read...

The World Bank has just released the 2007 Africa Development Indicators (ADI) based on more than 1,000 indicators of economic, human and private sector development, governance, environment, etc. The report highlights some important trends. On the one hand, Africa is enjoying a period of good economic growth. As Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank’s Vice President for the Africa Region, pointed out, “Over the past decade, Africa has recorded an average growth rate of 5.4 percent which is at par with the rest of the world.” But on the other hand, the growth has been highly uneven and skewed toward oil- and mineral-rich countries. A BBC article discussing the ADI report contains a useful visualization of this unequal growth distribution:......

An article by Edward S. Steinfeld in last weekends’ Washington Post Outlook section presents an interesting claim about China’s attempts to develop a market economy. He observes that even though China “provides none of the checks expected of a healthy market system: a free press, an independent judiciary, meaningful property rights and a real legislature,” its economic growth shows no signs of stalling and its lure as the world’s preferred factory persists. The author’s suggestion on why those two seemingly irreconcilable trends exist is the concept of China “outsourcing” its market institutions from abroad through integration with the global economy. The answer lies neither in some unique Chinese recipe for growth nor in some savvy dodging of global market norms on...

To say the global economy is complex would be an understatement. Economists continue to struggle to realize the secret to the wealth of nations. Recently, two physicists decided they would take a crack at uncovering the secrets of the global economy, and the results are quite interesting. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and Cesar A. Hidalgo R., from Notre Dame, developed a spatial model of the proximity of products in the global economy. Proximity is the measure of relatedness between products. As they explain, if a country exports apples, they will likely also be able to export pears, since they share similar inputs and technologies. Conversely, the inputs and technologies used in producing apples would be of little help in mining. The model quantifies some common sense concepts. The model...