The Costs and Benefits of Euro-sation in Central-Eastern Europe Before or Instead of EMU Membership

Countries unable or unwilling to join a Monetary Union can partly replicate membership effects through either a Currency Board or formal replacement of the domestic currency by the currency of the Union. Schemes of this kind have been introduced recently in Transition Economies. The net balance of costs and benefits involved, for the country and the common currency area, are shown to be an empirical question, depending on a number of conditions and primarily on the degree of monetary, real, and institutional convergence already achieved beforehand. Positive net advantages may derive from dollar/Euro-isation but should not be taken for granted.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39724/3/wp340.pd

Working Paper 74 - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-Credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia

In most African countries women tend to account for an average 51% of the population, andmake up about 65% of the rural labour force. Thus, many rural based micro-finance programmeshave attempted to address the women specific need for micro-credit. This paper analyses theeffectiveness of micro-credit as a means to reducing poverty, with particular focus on women,and demonstrates, through the critical analysis of some country-specific examples, that the useand supply of micro-credit does not always lead to a sustainable impact on household or femalepoverty reduction. Analysis of findings are done based on field data, interviews, and observationsfrom Malawi and Ethiopia.The paper has concluded that while MFIs aim to reduce poverty and empower women there isusually no clear implementation mechanism to achieve these aims. Some of the conclusions ofthe paper are: the inadequate and insufficient participation of the female clients themselves in thedesign of the programmes affects the levels of poverty reduction; the inability of certain commonlyused indicators of success/failure of micro-credit in measuring the non-quantifiable impact ofthe programmes on the clients; there are certain undesired effects of micro-credit delivery, whichmay hinder the process of poverty reduction; MFIs target women mainly due to the fact that thelending characteristics of the rural micro-credit are best suited to female clients, rather than maleclients. Moreover, the empowerment process which is assumed to occur as a result of these loans,is impeded by the micro size of the loan, the small returns from the use of the loan, and the factthat the returns themselves are still not always the major contributor to the family income ascompared to the male income. Furthermore, the paper argues that it is a misconception that anMFI always targets the ultimate poorest of the poor, the landless, the assetless, and the destitute,because, as the paper has demonstrated that for an MFI such a client profile will not ensurereturns and increase profits, and it is precisely such a beneficiary profile that is unattractive andunlikely to become a potential client. The changing policy environment, thus, puts more pressureand competition for the scarce resources between the poorest of the poor and the “not-so-poor”.This paper has highlighted the fact that since development interventions put greater focus onpromotion of, for example, export markets and international trade, and medium scale farmers andentrepreneurs, the actual micro-credit clients are not the typical ‘hand-to-mouth’ poor.Finally the paper gives broad recommendations for further research and analysis in order tostrengthen the capabilities of micro-credit for poverty reduction. Furthermore, the analysis in thispaper also provides the way-forward in the design of future micro-credit interventions for povertyreduction as well as gender and empowerment.

Community-based Adaptation: Lessons from the Development Marketplace 2009 on Adaptation to Climate Change

The Development Marketplace 2009 focused on adaptation to climate change. This paper identifies lessons from the Marketplace and assesses their implications for adaptation support. Our findings are based on: statistical tabulation of all proposals; in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of the 346 semi-finalists; and interviews with finalists and assessors. Proposals were fuelled by deep concerns that ongoing climate change and its impacts undermine development and exacerbate poverty, migration and food insecurity. Proposals addressed both local poverty and climate change challenges, and offered a wide range of approaches to render local development more resilient to current climate variability. Therefore, support to community-based adaptation should: exploit its strong local grounding and synergies with development; help connect local initiatives to higher levels; and use complementary approaches to address policy issues.Community-based Adaptation, Development Marketplace, Adaptation, Climate Change

Adapting to change: Time for climate resilience and a new adaptation strategy. EPC Issue Paper 5 March 2020

The dramatic effects of climate change are being felt across the European continent and the world. Considering how sluggish and unsuccessful the world has been in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the impacts will become long-lasting scars. Even implementing radical climate mitigation now would be insufficient in addressing the economic, societal and environmental implications of climate change, which are expected to only intensify in the years to come. This means climate mitigation must go hand in hand with the adaptation efforts recognised in the Paris Agreement. And although the damages of climate change are usually localised and adaptation measures often depend on local specificities, given the interconnections between ecosystems, people and economies in a globalised world there are strong reasons for European Union (EU) member states to join forces, pool risk and cooperate across borders. Sharing information, good practices, experiences and resources to strengthen resilience and enhance adaptive capacity makes sense economically, environmentally and socially. The European Commission’s 2013 Adaptation Strategy is the first attempt to set EU-wide adaptation and climate resilience and could be considered novel in that it tried to mainstream adaptation goals into relevant legislation, instruments and funds. It was not very proactive, however. It also lacked long-term perspective, failed to put the adaptation file high on the political agenda, was under resourced, and suffered from knowledge gaps and silo thinking. The Commission’s European Green Deal proposal, which has been presented as a major step forward to the goal of Europe becoming the world’s first climate-neutral continent, suggests that the Commission will adopt a new EU strategy on adaptation to climate within the first two years of its mandate (2020-2021). In light of the risks climate change poses to ecosystems, societies and the economy (through inter alia the vulnerability of the supply chain to climate change and its potential failure to provide services to consumers), adaptation should take a prominent role alongside mitigation in the EU’s political climate agenda. Respecting the division of treaty competences, there are important areas where EU-wide action and support could foster the continent’s resilience to climate change. The European Policy Centre (EPC) project “Building a climate-resilient Europe”, which has culminated in this Issue Paper, has identified the following: (i) the ability to convert science-based knowledge into preventive action and responsible behaviour, thus filling the information gap; (ii) the need to close the protection gap through better risk management and risk sharing; (iii) the necessity to adopt nature-based infrastructural solutions widely and tackle the grey infrastructure bias; and (iv) the need to address the funding and investment gap. This Issue Paper aims to help inform the upcoming EU Adaptation Strategy and, by extension, strengthen the EU’s resilience to climate change. To that end, the authors make a call for the EU to mainstream adaptation and shift its focus from reacting to disasters to a more proactive approach that prioritises prevention, risk reduction and resilience building. In doing so, the EU must ensure fairness and distributive justice while striving for climate change mitigation and protecting the environment and biodiversity. To succeed, the new EU Adaptation Strategy will need to address specific challenges related to the information, protection, funding and investment gaps; and the grey infrastructure bias. To tackle and address those challenges, this Paper proposes 17 solutions outlined in Table 1 (see page 6)

The Costs and Benefits of Euro-sation in Central-Eastern Europe Before or Instead of EMU Membership

Countries unable or unwilling to join a Monetary Union can partly replicate membership effects through either a Currency Board or formal replacement of the domestic currency by the currency of the Union. Schemes of this kind have been introduced recently in Transition Economies. The net balance of costs and benefits involved, for the country and the common currency area, are shown to be an empirical question, depending on a number of conditions and primarily on the degree of monetary, real, and institutional convergence already achieved beforehand. Positive net advantages may derive from dollar/Euro-isation but should not be taken for granted.Euro, monetary union, dollarisation, exchange rate regimes, convergence, transition

Abstracts : policy research working paper series - numbers 2197 - 2261

This paper contains abstracts of Policy Research Working Paper series Numbers 2197-2261.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

THE CHALLENGES OF POVERTY REDUCTION WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO RURAL POVERTY AND AGRICULTURE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Food Security and Poverty,

Addressing climate vulnerability : promoting the participatory rights of indigenous peoples and women through Finnish foreign policy

Julkaistu versi

Spatio-temporal correlation of extreme climate indices and river flood discharges

The occurrence of floods is strongly related to specific climatic conditions that favor extreme precipitation events. Although the impact of precipitation and temperature patterns on river flows is a well discussed topic in hydrology, few studies have focused on the rainfall and temperature extremes in their relation with peak discharges. This work presents a comparative analysis of Climate Change Indices (ETCCDI) annual time series, calculated using the NorthWestern Italy Optimal Interpolation (NWIOI) dataset, and annual maximum flows in the Piedmont Region. The Spearman’s rank correlation was used to determine which indices are temporally correlated with peak discharges, allowing to hypothesize the main physical processes involved in the production of floods. The correlation hypothesis was verified with the Spearman’s rank correlation test, considering a Student’s t-distribution with a 5% significance level. Moreover, the influence of climate variability on the tendency of annual maximum discharges was examined by correlating trends of climate indices with trends of the discharge series. These were calculated using the Theil-Sen slope estimator and tested with the Mann-Kendall test at the 5% significance level. The results highlight that while extreme precipitation indices are highly correlated with extreme discharges at the annual timescale, the interannual changes of extreme discharges may be better explained by the interannual changes of the total annual precipitation. This suggests that projections of the annual precipitation may be used as covariates for non-stationary flood frequency analysis