Legislating for doing good via PSD Blog - The World Bank Group
A deluge of kidnappings in Afghanistan’s investment climate via PSD Blog - The World Bank Group
Editor's Note: Arvind Jain is a private sector development specialist working on survey implementation in the Enterprise Surveys group. Welcome!
What does it take to get data on Afghanistan's investment climate? It's a lot harder than simply figuring out an appropriate survey design. During recent fieldwork in Afghanistan, the Enterprise Surveys group found out exactly what it takes. Although one might assume that the targets of kidnappings in Kabul are Westerners and international aid workers, the primary targets are actually Afghani businessmen. A successful kidnapping provides the perpetrators with quick cash - it is a much larger criminal enterprise compared to abductions conducted for ideological purposes. This meant it was not at all easy for interviewers from Enterprise Surveys... The hidden side of globalization via PSD Blog - The World Bank Group
Tashabos: Entrepreneurship Education in Afghanistan via CIPE Development Blog
“Educational Reform and Employment Opportunities in Sri Lanka” via CIPE Development Blog
Fact and Fiction via CIPE Development Blog
New Representation for Pakistan’s Women Entrepreneurs via CIPE Development Blog
We are seeing the historic emergence in Pakistan of chambers and other bodies established by women to represent the needs of women entrepreneurs. This development is in part due to regulatory changes that allow women to represent themselves, and also in part due to CIPE’s active support. Read what’s happening in the words of pioneering women’s advocates Shehla Javed Akram and Shamim Akhtar: First Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Pakistan; Leadership with Strategy for Sailing Through the Main......
Slipping up on the details via CIPE Development Blog
It’s difficult to know exactly what is happening in the north of Sri Lanka these days (media representatives are not allowed into the conflict-riddled war zone), but it’s clear that recent police actions in Colombo could have potentially disastrous effects – in an area rather open to international scrutiny at the moment. As reported by The Economist and the BBC, civilians who have arrived from the northern [Tamil-majority] areas to the [Sinhalese-majority] capital and surrounding areas in the past five years have, over the past week, been required to register with the police, supposedly in an effort to combat the suicide attacks that have become tragically more frequent of late.
The “census,” as it is being called, could of course be just that – a simple tally of how many...
Aid in Afghanistan via CIPE Development Blog
Anne Applebaum is not the first to criticize the rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan, just the latest. Her recent article in the Washington Post points out the shortcomings of aid programs in Afghanistan. She states that
This is a country in which all the best people are being hired away from the national government by the alphabet soup of aid agencies on the ground; in which the same aid agencies are driving up real estate and food prices; in which millions are squandered on dubious contractors, both local and foreign; in which the minister for rural development admits he doesn’t know what all of the NATO reconstruction teams in rural districts do; in which the top U.N. official, given a mandate to coordinate the donors, says the donors don’t respond to his attempts to...
Armed With Guns and Human Rights via CIPE Development Blog
CS Monitor has a very interesting piece - on monks with guns - profiling a new model of dissent in Burma. As you may remember from protests last year, young monks were particularly proactive in calling for change in Burma (is it a coincidence that young monks were also a lot more vocal in Tibet earlier this year?). Now, dissatisfied with the slow pace of reforms,
they are calling for fresh tactics, from teaching human rights theory to stockpiling arms.
Its a dual approach full of contradictions. On the one hand, young monks are increasingly talking about using violence to stand up to oppression - something that goes against the very nature of Buddhism. On the other hand, they are also exploring new ways of reaching out to people, including education on the basics of political...
Our way is the highway via CIPE Development Blog
The King Cobra is not the fastest snake, and it is not the biggest snake, but it just might be the most revered. The city of Nagercoil, at the southern tip of India, contains a temple to the King Cobra, worshipped as a deity. India’s new mascot might be the King Cobra. It is not the fastest growing economy, nor is it the biggest, and who doesn’t like Ghandi?
India’s newest metaphorical cobra is a 3,633 mile long highway connecting its four major population centers, Delhi; Kolkata; Mumbai; and Chennai. Dubbed the “Golden Quadrilateral (GQ)” by the Indian Government, officials expect it to stimulate further economic development in rural India, where 70 percent of India still live, by facilitating the movement of goods into and out of the country.
Combined with...
Annual Reports: Country Reports, Failed States, Human Rights/South Asia, Humanitarian Accountability, Religious Freedom via Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog
The 2007 Humanitarian Accountability Report (HAP International, August 2008) [text]
2008 Report on International Religious Freedom (U.S. Department of State, Sept. 2008) [text]
Country reports 2007: Belarus, Moldova, Russian Federation and Ukraine (ECRE, July 2008) [text]
Failed States Index 2008 (Foreign Policy & Fund for Peace, July/August 2008) [text]
South Asia Human Rights Index 2008...
Two steps forward, one step back: The media in Indonesia via CIPE Development Blog
Yesterday, I attended a roundtable discussion on the state of the media in Indonesia after Soeharto, held by the Center for International Media Assistance of the National Endowment for Democracy. Some interesting points relating to different types of media:
Print: Janet Steele (George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs; author of a book on Tempo, an independent magazine during the Soeharto years), praised the relatively free regulatory environment instituted by the post-Soeharto government and noting that the last remaining great obstacle is the civil defamation law and its enforcement. Citing a poorly educated judiciary with little understanding of press freedom, she told one story of how, when a rival print news outlet’s conglomerate owner was logging...
Can Islamic Finance go micro? via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
With more than half-a-trillion dollars in assets and an annual growth rate that has outpaced conventional banks’ by nearly 50 percent, the Islamic finance industry is already making waves among investment fund managers. And this not only applies to the Muslim world: The Banker magazine recently named the United Kingdom to its list of the top 15 countries managing Sharia-compliant assets.
The new CGAP Publication Islamic Microfinance: An Emerging Market Niche argues that the Islamic finance industry, with its unprecedented popularity and growth, may be well-placed to address a critical need in microfinance: reaching the some 72 percent of people in Muslim-majority countries who do not use formal financial services.Much of that gap owes to unmet demand for products that comply with... Doing Business 2009 - Five years of reforms via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
Doing Business 2009 is here! The sixth in the World Bank Group's annual series on business regulations, DB 2009 allows us to take a look at five years of reforms since DB 2004. But before I get to that, let me hit the highlights of DB 2009:
This year's top reformer is...drum roll please...Azerbaijan! Azerbaijan improved on 7 out of 10 of the indicators tracked by DB and moved up 64 slots in the overall rankings.
Two regions - Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa - accounted for 7 of the top 10 reformers: Azerbaijan, Albania, Kyrgyz Republic, Belarus, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Botswana. The other top 10 were Columbia, Egypt, and Dominican Republic.
Once again, Singapore tops the rankings, followed by New Zealand, the United States, and Hong Kong, China. ... Doing Business in India via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
In India, it’s all about location, location, location via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
The Financial Times reports today that Tata Motors, the company behind the Rs100,000 (US$2280) Nano mini car, has faced protests over the location of its factory. Some 2,000 state police blocked the road to the factory in West Bengal. Protestors are concerned that farmers have been unfairly displaced from Tata's 1,000-acre site. On the upside for Tata, FT reports that it has received proposals for relocation from at least nine Indian states. I guess the diminutive Nano is in demand. This doesn't seem to be the only case in India's recent history of such protests, though.
Vedanta University, the brainchild of Indian businessman Anil Agarwal, has also faced opposition over its sprawling campuses in the state of Orissa. Agarwal wants a truly elite university for... Workforce development as a response to information asymmetry via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
Supply and demand in higher education via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
It might still be an international market with stiff barriers, but higher education is definitely becoming more competitive. The U.S., traditionally dominate, has been losing market share due to increased competition from the rest of the world. A new report from the Council of Graduate Schools drives home the point. While the number of international graduate students continues to increase globally, the U.S. has seen a slowdown in applications from the rest of the world:
Growth from India in particular dropped off steeply, from 12 percent to 2 percent. While it may not bode well for American universities, the increasing competition in the international education market will certainly increase the options open to aspiring businessmen and scientists from the developing world.... Losing Press Freedoms via CIPE Development Blog
Significant growth in violence in Afghanistan has been capturing the headlines over the past few weeks. But somewhat beneath the surface, another type of attacks has become everpresent in the country — attacks on media. These attacks are carried out by government agencies unhappy with reporting. Interesting is the government’s position in regards to media, especially when reports clash with national security interests:
Some officials argue that these bounds are crossed when critical reporting weakens the central government and strengthens the Taliban. They point out that given present security conditions reporters also have an obligation to protect the national interest.
“The media does not reflect the achievements of the government,” Sadeq Mudaber, the...
The greatest return on investment via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
Outsourcing credit card defaults via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
Universities and development via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
Every year around this time, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University makes waves with its Academic Ranking of World Universities. As always, North America dominates in the short list of top 100 universities, with the Ivy League universities occupying most of the top slots. And as always, aggrieved parties produce howls of pain along with numerous complaints about methodological flaws - see a few examples here and here.
While there are certainly flaws, part of the problem lies in the inherent impossibility of ranking universities. These institutions devote themselves to many different tasks, while the Jiao Tong rankings examine only one task - research. (For an excellent discussion of the debate around rankings, see this commentary from Alex Usher of the Educational Policy Institute.) Jiao... “Addressing Problems That Tear Families Apart: Why Good Governance Matters for Family Firms” via CIPE Development Blog
Family firms have long been excluded from the debate on good governance, since corporate governance is conventionally viewed as applicable only in the domain of public corporations. Yet only 15 percent of family-owned businesses survive until the third generation, indicating a great need for improved governance.
In his Feature Service article, Mr. A. Razak Dawood, Chairman of the Pakistan Business Council and the former Federal Commerce Minister of Pakistan, addresses crucial problems faced by family firms, such as inadequate focus on preserving their human and intellectual capital rather than just financial assets. He also talks about the ways in which governance in family firms can be improved, starting with the formulation of a statement outlining the purpose, values, and goals of...
Workforce development, Indian style via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
Computers in the (Indian) classroom via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
Who benefits from the brain drain? via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
There is considerable debate about whether the mobility of highly skilled labor constitutes a brain drain or a brain circulation. A publication of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada makes it clear that to the extent there is a brain drain, then Canada is a large beneficiary (Hat tip: GlobalHigherEd). Between 2001 and 2006, more than 3,000 Chinese PhD holders emigrated to Canada. Another 1,200 Indian PhD holders emigrated to Canada in that same time period. I have to wonder how many yuan and rupees the Chinese and Indian governments spent on educating these individuals before they took their skills elsewhere? ... Air India and the beauty premium via PSD Blog - World Bank Group
Over at the New York Times's Freakonomics Blog, Stephen Dubner contemplates the beauty premium. In a recent post, he decided to ask some real people whether looks matter in their career. Most of the people he spoke to said that looks mattered - the only exception was an environmental engineer who works with wastewater! Of course, Dubner's selection of people wasn't exactly random; one of the respondents is in the "adult entertainment" industry. And the respondents rate themselves on average about 8 out of 10 on a scale of attractiveness, which suggests the sample is a bit lopsided (or perhaps just highly self-regarding?).
In any case, while looks obviously matter in the adult entertainment industry, how much looks matter for the rest of us has been open to speculation. Now, at least... Women Leadership in Pakistan – A Change in the Making via CIPE Development Blog
The challenges to increasing female participation in mainstream economic activity, and the creation of leadership within women entrepreneurs, are manifold. These challenges range from social taboos; conservative lobbies; lack of access to education, information, and finance to discriminatory behaviors by male counterparts, severely inhibiting the ability of women to develop leadership skills and to participate in the policymaking process. Yet another complexity is the non-existent gender focused institutions such as women chambers, which generally act as facilitators in networking, mentorship, and learning opportunities.
In Pakistan, the low literacy rate, especially for girls, is alarming. That is compounded by a high dropout rate from schools. According to the Population Census the...