Regional dimensions of economic development in Iran: A new economic geography approach

This paper presents a spatial analysis on regional dimensions of poverty and economic development across provinces of Iran. It offers the first ever estimation made in developing countries using this strand of "New Economic Geography" (NEG) models and provides a comparison of the results between previously studied developed countries and Iran as a developing country. The goal of this study is to offer an analysis of the effects of agglomeration and dispersion economies on the patterns of regional economic development in Iran. It analyzes the linkages among adjacent provinces as well as effects of agglomeration and dispersion economies on the patterns of Iran's regional economic development through empirical estimation of two of the NEG models. First, it presents an estimation of a "Market Potential Function" (MPF), in which wages are associated with proximity to consumer markets. Second, the paper estimates an augmented MPF derived from the Krugman model of economic geography. The parameters in this model estimate the importance of transportation cost and economies of scale. The estimation results suggest that Iran showed generally good fit to both models and satisfied both MPF and Krugman model specifications. Compared to other similar studies in developed countries, Iran shows smaller returns to scale and consistently higher size of the effect of market potential on wages

Regional dimensions of economic development in Iran: A new economic geography approach

This paper presents a spatial analysis of the regional dimensions of poverty and economic development across provinces of Iran. It offers one of the few estimations made in developing countries using this strand of New Economic Geography (NEG) models and provides a comparison of the results for Iran with those in previously studied developed countries. The goal of this study is to offer an analysis of the effects of agglomeration and dispersion economies on the patterns of regional economic development in Iran based on the empirical estimation of two of the NEG models. First, it presents an estimation of a Market Potential Function (MPF), in which wages are associated with proximity to consumer markets. Second, it estimates an augmented MPF derived from the Krugman model of economic geography that estimates the importance of transportation costs and economies of scale. The estimation results suggest that Iran shows a generally good fit to both models, satisfying their specifications. Compared to similar studies of developed countries, Iran shows smaller returns to scale. This might be a result of the nature of the technologies used in the non-farm private sector in Iran, which is less industrial and more traditional. Dispersion and decentralization of industries to achieve lower income inequality between provinces would create a level of loss, but less losses than they would be in Western countries. The paper also found a significantly and consistently greater effect of market potential on wages in comparison to the effect estimated in similar analyses of other countries. This might be a result of the country relying on an underdeveloped transportation system between provinces in Iran. It is also a highly mountainous and geographically diverse country. The overall result of this study corroborates the notion of centralization in the Iranian economy. The large wage variations explained by economic geography could cause significant internal migration, beyond that seen in western countries. Indeed, significant internal migration has been observed in Iran in past years

Youth and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Challenges and Opportunities for Implementation

Young people ages 15 to 24 are 1.2 billion of the world’s human capital. Around the world, many of them are already making contributions to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and their work should be further acknowledged and strengthened. Increasingly, youth are recognized as key participants in decision-making and development, as reflected in the growing presence of non-governmental youth organizations and the upsurge of youth advisory boards and committees to international institutions and programmes. Yet building the capacity of and creating sustained partnerships with young people are crucial strategies to achieving the MDGs that have not been fully realized by the international community. This paper aims to provide an overview of youth participation as it currently exists, to outline the ways in which youth are directly involved and affected by each Goal, to demonstrate the ways in which young people are contributing to the MDGs, and to provide ‘Options for Action’ that governments, the United Nations system, donors and other actors can harness, support, and scale-up in order to support young people in making significant contributions to achieving the MDGs. Part I outlines the existing mechanisms for youth participation in development policy. These channels can be used by governments and institutions to strengthen and mobilize young people as partners in policy formulation. Successful modes of participation should be recognized and replicated, and also adapted to the challenging political and socio-economic realities facing many youth-led and youth-serving organizations. Part II presents youth participation as it relates directly to the MDGs. Each goal is analyzed with respect to its effect on young peoples lives as well as how young people can play – and indeed are playing — a role in its implementation. Under each goal are a number of “Options for Action” that governments, the UN and multilateral organizations can use to fully harness the contributions that youth can make to achieving the MDGs. Part III outlines the synergies between the Options for Action presented in this report and the Quick Wins proposed by the Millennium Project. The Options for Action are complimentary and provide a process to implement the Quick Win actions, using young people as key implementing agents and service providers. Part III also outlines a number of youth-focused Quick Wins that can make a significant and measurable difference to the state of young people in target countries. Part IV elaborates on how youth can participate in achieving the MDGs and contains cross-cutting recommendations on youth engagement in all 8 Goals. Overall, the report demonstrates that investing in youth will provide the longest and most effective dividend towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by building the social capital needed to foster pragmatic development. Indeed, without the involvement of young people, a demographic that comprises one fifth of the world’s total population, the full achievement of the MDGs will remain elusive and their long-term sustainability will be compromised. Youth participation is currently quite varied, ranging from effective, to sometimes tokenistic, to often non-existent. There are specific ways in which youth and youth organizations can contribute to the design and implementation of MDG-based strategies, some of which are outlined in this document. Many projects are already happening, but there is much work left still to be done.Youth participation; Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); Poverty Eradication

Speaking the Same Language within the International Organizations; A Proposal for an Enhanced Evaluation Approach to Measure and Compare Success of International Organizations

It is currently difficult for Member States to assess and compare the success or performance of UN organizations despite recent movements towards results-based approaches. Efforts in the implementation of logical frameworks have been too independent and uncoordinated and left at the discretion of agencies. This has led to different and deficient implementations of the same theoretical approach making it almost impossible to draw any conclusions. The lack of a common approach is perceptible across agencies in the diversity of evaluation standards and terminology used to describe the same concepts, the unevenness and diversity of staff training as well as in the way intentions and results are presented. The myriad of organizations with some different sort of evaluation role may be seen as an additional symptom of the lack of coordination within the UN system. The establishment of a useful and reliable evaluation process in the UN system requires three main elements: 1- a common and enhanced evaluation framework, 2- the human and organizational capacity to ensure the accurate implementation of the framework, and 3- the commitment of Member States and agencies to implement the approach. This report mainly discusses the common evaluation framework and methodological issues, although it also provides significant insight regarding how to build the human and organizational capacity of the UN to carry out this approach. Assessing the success of an organization entails the determination of three elements: mandate or mission relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency. The report provides insight into these three components of success but its primary focus is on effectiveness. Measuring effectiveness entails establishing precise targets to be reached by agencies and collecting actual results in order to assess if intended targets are being met. Indeed, assessing effectiveness encompasses comparing intentions (provided by targets) to actual achievements (collected through monitoring). The UN Secretariat itself does not provide targets to be met by the organization. Additionally, it over-emphasizes outputs (output implementation rates) and disregards the “big picture” provided by outcomes. Under the proposed approach, subprograms meeting most of their targets are the most effective. Programs (agencies) with a large share of effective subprograms (programs) may be considered effective themselves. As a way to simplify and give an intuitive sense of effectiveness, subprograms could be attributed a category or color following a “traffic light” methodology (green for satisfactory, amber for average, red for below expectations) according to the share of targets satisfactorily met. The same could be done for programs according to their share of satisfactory subprograms. Program and subprogram performance data of every agency could be centralized (by a coordinating body) in a comprehensive webpage that would facilitate comparison between similar functions or themes across the UN system [Please refer to pg. 27 for an elaborate illustration]. The report also suggests the possibility of complementing this objective approach with a perception survey. Despite significant limitations of this type of subjective approach, it is still widely used and gives an idea of which organizations are best regarded by their peers. Contrasting actual performance data and perception indicators could be revealing, and could shed light in areas where the objective methodology may fall short. One of the most important recommendations concerns the organizational capacity ensuring the accurate implementation of the evaluation approach. This capacity should be embodied by a centralizing coordinating body (perhaps under the CEB) that would 1-ensure a common evaluation training and support of UN staff and uniformity of standards (terminology, methods, etc.), 2- centralize performance data gathered from agencies in a common database and present results in a user-friendly manner where programs and agencies could be compared and 3- verify the validity of the data submitted by the agencies (performance auditing)

Youth and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Challenges and Opportunities for Implementation

Young people ages 15 to 24 are 1.2 billion of the world’s human capital. Around the world, many of them are already making contributions to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and their work should be further acknowledged and strengthened. Increasingly, youth are recognized as key participants in decision-making and development, as reflected in the growing presence of non-governmental youth organizations and the upsurge of youth advisory boards and committees to international institutions and programmes. Yet building the capacity of and creating sustained partnerships with young people are crucial strategies to achieving the MDGs that have not been fully realized by the international community. This paper aims to provide an overview of youth participation as it currently exists, to outline the ways in which youth are directly involved and affected by each Goal, to demonstrate the ways in which young people are contributing to the MDGs, and to provide ‘Options for Action’ that governments, the United Nations system, donors and other actors can harness, support, and scale-up in order to support young people in making significant contributions to achieving the MDGs. Part I outlines the existing mechanisms for youth participation in development policy. These channels can be used by governments and institutions to strengthen and mobilize young people as partners in policy formulation. Successful modes of participation should be recognized and replicated, and also adapted to the challenging political and socio-economic realities facing many youth-led and youth-serving organizations. Part II presents youth participation as it relates directly to the MDGs. Each goal is analyzed with respect to its effect on young peoples lives as well as how young people can play – and indeed are playing — a role in its implementation. Under each goal are a number of “Options for Action” that governments, the UN and multilateral organizations can use to fully harness the contributions that youth can make to achieving the MDGs. Part III outlines the synergies between the Options for Action presented in this report and the Quick Wins proposed by the Millennium Project. The Options for Action are complimentary and provide a process to implement the Quick Win actions, using young people as key implementing agents and service providers. Part III also outlines a number of youth-focused Quick Wins that can make a significant and measurable difference to the state of young people in target countries. Part IV elaborates on how youth can participate in achieving the MDGs and contains cross-cutting recommendations on youth engagement in all 8 Goals. Overall, the report demonstrates that investing in youth will provide the longest and most effective dividend towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by building the social capital needed to foster pragmatic development. Indeed, without the involvement of young people, a demographic that comprises one fifth of the world’s total population, the full achievement of the MDGs will remain elusive and their long-term sustainability will be compromised. Youth participation is currently quite varied, ranging from effective, to sometimes tokenistic, to often non-existent. There are specific ways in which youth and youth organizations can contribute to the design and implementation of MDG-based strategies, some of which are outlined in this document. Many projects are already happening, but there is much work left still to be done

Regional dimensions of economic development in Iran: A new economic geography approach

This paper presents a spatial analysis on regional dimensions of poverty and economic development across provinces of Iran. It offers the first ever estimation made in developing countries using this strand of "New Economic Geography" (NEG) models and provides a comparison of the results between previously studied developed countries and Iran as a developing country. The goal of this study is to offer an analysis of the effects of agglomeration and dispersion economies on the patterns of regional economic development in Iran. It analyzes the linkages among adjacent provinces as well as effects of agglomeration and dispersion economies on the patterns of Iran's regional economic development through empirical estimation of two of the NEG models. First, it presents an estimation of a "Market Potential Function" (MPF), in which wages are associated with proximity to consumer markets. Second, the paper estimates an augmented MPF derived from the Krugman model of economic geography. The parameters in this model estimate the importance of transportation cost and economies of scale. The estimation results suggest that Iran showed generally good fit to both models and satisfied both MPF and Krugman model specifications. Compared to other similar studies in developed countries, Iran shows smaller returns to scale and consistently higher size of the effect of market potential on wages.New Economic Geography; Spatial agglomeration; Market potential; Market structure; Increasing returns to scale; Transport costs; Iranian economy; Economic development in Iran; Income distribution in the provinces of Iran; Empirical evaluation