The international financial crisis has hit the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), like other developing regions, unexpectedly, during a long phase of above-average growth. In contrast to other parts of the world, however, most MENA developing countries will able to get off lightly if the crisis does not last for too long. In Turkey and Israel, the region's more industrialized countries, different initial conditions apply and the situation is not comparable to the Arab MENA countries.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, Markets, and Financial Crisis
Support for private sector development is an important item on the ODA budgets of most donor countries and recently, there has even been an upsurge in the weight given to 'private sector led growth'. In this working paper, Jørgen Estrup, an independent senior adviser with comprehensive experience in aid programmes supporting the private sector in developing countries, provides an overview of recent trends in donor support to private sector development. The paper goes through the history of and rationale for support to the private sector, and it identifies a number of distinct approaches to the subject. Moreover, the paper discusses these approaches in the context of the Paris Declaration and notes a conspicuous lack of coherence between the approaches to private sector development and the principles of the Declaration.
The productivity and competitiveness of local firms in non-OECD countries depends as much on technological capacities and successful upgrading as in industrialized countries. However, developing countries undertake very little to no original R and primarily depend on foreign technology. Long-term contracts and subcontracting arrangements within global value chains are here very important forms of transnational cooperation and therefore also important channels for technology transfer, especially as the majority of these countries attract only limited foreign direct investment. Drawing on innovation and growth models as much as on value-chain literature, we outline an analytical model for empirical research on local firm upgrading in non-OECD countries and technology transfer within global value chains.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, Science and Technology, and Foreign Direct Investment
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the vulnerability of the middle class in Latin America in face of the neo-liberal policies implemented in the region during recent decades and discusses possible policies and programs that promote the building and strengthening of democratic processes throughout the region. Changes in the Latin American middle class are examined. An important part of the middle class can be active participants in the process of building democracy and developing inclusive and equitable societies. This will require the implementation of policies and programs that promote the participation of the middle class in the public sphere.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, and Social Stratification
What is the problem? In addition to the current Global Financial Crisis (GFC), there is a second global crisis: long-term mass poverty in the third world. While the rich world worries about a repeat of the Great Depression, today more than a billion people in Asia live in conditions of bitter poverty which are much worse than those of the 1930s. As a result of the GFC, poverty in developing Asia is now likely to increase.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Poverty, and Financial Crisis
Zimbabwe's long night is by no means over. Nearly a year after the violent and disputed March 2008 elections, and months after the September signing of a 'Global Political Agreement' with the ruling ZANU-PF party, the main faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) agreed in February to take part in a coalition government in which its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, became Prime Minister. The state apparatus in Zimbabwe is currently shared uneasily by reformers and reactionaries with each of the MDC and ZANU-PF having half of the cabinet seats. Hardline ZANU-PF elements remain in government and control the security services, and a quiet but intense power struggle continues.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Development, Foreign Aid, and Food
Often highly skilled migration from developing to Western countries is conceptualized as “brain drain” and as detrimental for development. However, recent research and policy development challenges mainstream assumptions of brain drain, insisting that skilled migration is a more complex phenomenon. In this paper, the evidence for the migration of the skilled either to prejudice or to promote development will be examined. The terms “brain drain” and “brain gain” immediately introduce into the debate value judgements, which are either negative, that migration is bad for countries of origin, or positive, that migration is good and can be used to promote development. The evidence for each is conflicting and the adoption of such judgemental terms obscures factual analyses. The paper argues that rather than focussing on the consequences of the migration, policy should focus more on the causes and particularly on training and education policies.
Access to medicines poses a critical challenge in developing countries, largely because prices are high, and new or adapted medicines and vaccines to address diseases of the developing world are lacking. More than 5 million people in low and middle income countries still lack access to the anti-retroviral medicines needed to treat HIV and AIDS. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have unleashed a new epidemic of suffering across the developing world. Pandemics are a serious threat in rich and poor countries alike, but while rich countries can stockpile medicines, these are often unaffordable for poor countries. Most people in developing countries pay for medicines out-of-pocket, so even a slight price increase can mean that life-saving medicines are unaffordable.
An international financing mechanism, intervening for market impact to scale up access to treatment of HIV and AIDS, TB, and malaria in developing countries.
The timing of rain, and intra-seasonal rainfall patterns are critical to smallholder farmers in developing countries. Seasonality influences farmers' decisions about when to cultivate and sow and harvest. It ultimately contributes to the success or failure of their crops. Worryingly, therefore, farmers are reporting that both the timing of rainy seasons and the pattern of rains within seasons are changing. These perceptions of change are striking in that they are geographically widespread and because the changes are described in remarkably consistent terms. In this paper, we relate the perceptions of farmers from several regions(East Asia, South Asia, Southern and East Africa, and Latin America) of how seasons are changing, and in some cases, how once distinct seasons appear to be disappearing altogether, and the impacts that these changes are having. We then go on to ask two critical questions. Firstly, do meteorological observations support farmers' perceptions of changing seasonality? Secondly, to what extent are these changes consistent with predictions from climate models? We conclude that changing seasonality may be one of the major impacts of climate change faced by smallholder farmers in developing countries over the next few decades. Indeed, this may already be the case. Yet it is relatively unexplored in the literature. We also suggest some of the key adaptation responses that might help farmers cope with these changes.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Development, and Energy Policy