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2. Promoting Inclusive Growth in Arab Countries: Rural and Regional Development and Inequality in Tunisia
- Author:
- Mongi Boughzala and Mohamed Tlili Hamdi
- Publication Date:
- 02-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- Regional disparities and inequality between the rural and the urban areas in Tunisia have been persistently large and perceived as a big injustice. The main regions that did not receive an equitable share from the country's economic growth, as compared to the coastal regions that are highly urbanized, are the predominantly rural western regions. Their youth often have to migrate to the cities to look for work and most of them end up with low-paying and frustrating jobs in the informal sector. The more educated among them face a very uncertain outlook and the highest rate of unemployment. This bias is strongest for female workers and university graduates living in the poor rural regions. The purpose of this paper is to study the underlying causes and factors of these disparities and to discuss policies and measures that may allow these regions to benefit from faster and more inclusive growth.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, Poverty, and Social Stratification
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Arabia, and Tunisia
3. Improving Regional and Rural Development for Inclusive Growth in Egypt
- Author:
- Hafez Ghanem
- Publication Date:
- 01-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- This paper examines how economic growth in Egypt can be made more inclusive through a focus on rural development and reducing regional disparities. Nearly all of the extremely poor in Egypt live in rural areas and 83 percent of them live in Upper Egypt. The youth in those rural areas feel particularly excluded.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Economics, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Arabia
4. Do Trends in U.S. Inequality Matter for Norms of Global Governance? Concepts and Empirics for Debate
- Author:
- Carol Graham
- Publication Date:
- 01-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- The United States has long been viewed as the "land of opportunity," where those who work hard get ahead. Belief in this feature of American national identity has persisted even though inequality has been rising for de¬cades. In recent years, the trend toward extremes of income and wealth has accelerated significantly, owing to demographic shifts, the skills bias of the economy and fiscal policy. From 1997 to 2007, the share of income accru¬ing to the top 1 percent of U.S. households increased by 13.5 percentage points, which is equivalent to shifting $1.1 trillion in total annual income to this group - more than the total income of the bottom 40 percent of households. The precise impact of inequality on individual well-being remains controversial, partly because of the complex nature of the metrics needed to gauge it accurately, but also because why it matters depends on what it signals. If inequality is perceived to be the result of just reward for individual effort, then it can be a constructive signal of future opportunities. However, if it is perceived to be the result of an unfair system that rewards a privileged few, inequality can undermine incentives to work hard and invest in the future. In this sense, current U.S. trends have been largely destructive. Economic mobility, for example, has declined in recent decades and is now lower than in many other industrialized countries. There is also a strong intergenerational income correlation (about 0.5) in the U.S.; children of parents who earn 50 percent more than the average are likely to earn 25 percent above the average of their generation. In a world in which individuals' fates are increasingly linked and effective gover¬nance depends on some kind of consensus on social and distributive justice norms, growing income differentials in one country - especially one that has long served as a beacon of economic opportunity - can affect behavior elsewhere, both in terms of investments in education and the labor market and the propensity to protest. More generally, declining economic mobility in the U.S. could undermine confidence in the principles of market econo¬mies and democratic governance that America has espoused for decades - principles that are fundamental to many countries' development strategies.
- Topic:
- Economics, Poverty, Social Stratification, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- United States and Germany
5. Taking Development Activities to Scale in Fragile and Low Capacity Environments
- Author:
- Johannes F. Linn and Laurence Chandy
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- Fragile states present one of the greatest challenges to global development and poverty reduction. Despite much new learning that has emerged from within the development community in recent years, understanding of how to address fragility remains modest. There is growing recognition that donor engagement in fragile states must look beyond the confines of the traditional aid effectiveness agenda if it is to achieve its intended objectives, which include state building, meeting the needs of citizens, and managing risk more effectively. Current approaches are constrained by relying heavily on small-scale interventions, are weakened by poor coordination and volatility, and struggle to promote an appropriate role for the recipient state.</p
- Topic:
- Development, Poverty, and Foreign Aid
6. Benchmarking Against Progress: An Assessment of Australia's Aid Effectiveness
- Author:
- Laurence Chandy
- Publication Date:
- 12-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- Is Australia's aid program effective? Measuring the effectiveness of aid is no easy feat. For a start, there is uncertainty about what aid is trying to achieve. Even seemingly straightforward objectives, like poverty reduction, throw up a range of questions as to what precisely ought to be measured. For instance, how should one balance the provision of temporary relief to those in need with catalyzing permanent transformation in people's lives (Barder, 2009)? Second, it is notoriously difficult to isolate the effect of a single aid program from other factors. Aid is delivered in an environment of enormous complexity where all manner of other events shape outcomes, including actions by recipient governments, aid from other countries, non-aid flows, and the performance of the global economy. To accurately attribute impact to aid therefore requires a thorough understanding of the setting in which aid is given. Third, the effects of aid are not always immediate or straightforward. For instance, improvements in people's skills or the performance of institutions may manifest gradually. Measurements of what aid achieves must be sensitive to the different ways change is brought about (Woolcock et al., 2009).
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- Australia/Pacific
7. Scaling Up the Fight Against Rural Poverty
- Author:
- Johannes F. Linn, Richard Kohl, Homi Kharas, Arntraud Hartmann, and Barbara Massler
- Publication Date:
- 10-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has for many years stressed innovation, knowledge and scaling up as essential ingredients of its strategy to combat rural poverty in developing countries. This institutional review of IFAD's approach to scaling up is the first of its kind: A team of development experts were funded by a small grant from IFAD to assess IFAD's track record in scaling up successful interventions, its operational policies and processes, instruments, resources and incentives, and to provide recommendations to management for how to turn IFAD into a scaling-up institution. Beyond IFAD, this institutional scaling up review is a pilot exercise that can serve as an example for other development institutions.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, and Food
8. A New Strategy to Leverage Business for International Development
- Author:
- Robert Mosbacher, Jr.
- Publication Date:
- 05-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- To tackle global poverty, it is essential to craft a new and dynamic approach to economic development that refl ects the realities of a 21st century global economy and incorporates the participation of a wide variety of new players, particularly from the private sector. While investment, trade and innovation all represent basic components of building healthy economies, this paper focuses primarily on strategies to increase both in-country and international private capital investment in order to create jobs. To that end, it concentrates on two areas: strengthening and reforming the existing structures, coordinating mechanisms and policies that support U. S. economic development efforts; and improving public-private partnership models to promote broader fi nancing to local businesses, greater human capital support and technical assistance and improved physical and ICT infrastructure.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, Poverty, and Third World
- Political Geography:
- United States
9. Institutions Versus Policies: A Tale of Two Islands
- Author:
- Peter Blair Henry and Conrad Miller
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- Recent work emphasizes the primacy of differences in countries' colonially-bequeathed property rights and legal systems for explaining differences in their subsequent economic development. Barbados and Jamaica provide a striking counter example to this long-run view of income determination. Both countries inherited property rights and legal institutions from their English colonial masters yet experienced starkly different growth trajectories in the aftermath of independence. From 1960 to 2002, Barbados' Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita grew roughly three times as fast as Jamaica's. Consequently, the income gap between Barbados and Jamaica is now almost five times larger than at the time of independence. Since their property rights and legal systems are virtually identical, recent theories of development cannot explain the divergence between Barbados and Jamaica. Differences in macroeconomic policy choices, not differences in institutions, account for the heterogeneous growth experiences of these two Caribbean nations.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Caribbean
10. Making Poverty History? How Activists, Philanthropists, and the Public Are Changing Global Development
- Author:
- Lael Brainard and Vinca LaFleur
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- The international development community as we have known it for sixty years is undergoing an extreme makeover. If its roots go back to the Marshall Plan and the founding of the Bretton Woods institutions, its modern incarnation has branched both up and out— dramatically altering the landscape of humanity's efforts to alleviate poverty.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- United States
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