Innovative Sources of Development Finance: Global Cooperation in the Twenty-first Century

global taxes, fees,, charges, world development organization

Macroeconomics of Fiscal Policy in Developing Countries

Fiscal policy, Domestic debt, Foreign debt

Vulnerability and natural disasters in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Kyrgyz Republic

This paper analyses vulnerability in Fiji, the Kyrgyz republic, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. In incorporating measures of vulnerability there is no major departure from the perspective of MDG 1 Analyses of vulnerability, like that in the present paper, emphasize the fact that the debates around poverty-growth elasticities are premised on the assumption of a state of world without any risks and uncertainties. In the real world in which the poor actually live they are subject to risks – both general and idiosyncratic – which affect their welfare. Thus poverty should not be viewed in static terms but within a framework that allows for changing states of the world. Nor should the possibility of reaching MDG1 be viewed simply as a matter of extrapolating from existing poverty levels using such computed growth poverty elasticities. Such a strategy runs the risk of becoming a statistical artefact with little relevance to the welfare of the poor. This paper begins by briefly surveying the empirical literature on vulnerability. It makes a distinction between vulnerability measures based on household level data and measures based on aggregate data. Since household level data are not available for these countries this paper provides measures of vulnerability and quantifies certainty equivalent consumption growth for these countries over the recent past. It then projects from computed growth rates of consumption and their corresponding certainty equivalent magnitudes to understand some implications of such vulnerability for reaching the poverty related MDG (MDG1). It is discovered that certainty equivalent consumption growth is much lower than average real per capita consumption growth indeed, in some cases, it is negative. This performance is linked to the incidence of aggregate shocks in these economies – particularly in the 1990s. Based on these trends it is concluded that real consumption per capita by 2015 would be lower in all four countries than what is required to attain MDG1

Vulnerability to Poverty in select Central Asian Countries

In the extant literature either income or consumption expenditures as measured over short periods of time have been regarded as a proxy for the material well-being of households. However, economists have long recognized that a household's sense of well-being depends not just on its average income or expenditures, but also on the risks it faces and its ability to deal with these risks. Hence vulnerability is a more satisfactory measure of welfare. In this study we used the concept of vulnerability as expected poverty to assess the household vulnerability to poverty in four Central Asian countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Except for Tajikistan, headcount poverty and vulnerability rates are significantly different. We also find that vulnerability differs significantly across households by location and selected household characteristics. In this paper we use a simple empirical measurement that allows estimating the headcount vulnerability to poverty using cross-section data. This measurement is based on the strong assumption that households have the same conditional distribution of consumption in a stationary environment. While this approach cannot capture all dimensions of vulnerability, it at least begins to raise the policy issue that vulnerability should be considered alongside poverty.Poverty ; Vulnerability ; Cross-section data ; Central Asia

Alleviating environmental degradation in the Asia-Pacific region: international cooperation and the role of issue-linkage

This paper argues that the most important environmental challenge within the Asia-Pacific region is that of uninternalised externalities. While developed countries have put in place mechanisms of governance and regulatory structures that internalise most of their domestic environmental external effects the same cannot be said of domestic environmental external effects of developing countries and transnational environmental external effects, although these are some of the most pressing environmental problems facing the countries in the region. Whereas developing countries are paying a high price for uninternalised domestic externalities they and the developed countries have an important stake in finding internalisation solutions to transnational environmental externalities. The paper argues that absence of linkage among these issues and other outcomes of keen interest to developing countries (viz. trade negotiations and the possibility of side payments) has made progress in this area impossible. Hence there is a case for institutional innovation to facilitate Coasian deal-making among these countries through issue linkage

The political economy of recent economic growth in India

The political economy of Indias economic growth is an issue of abiding interest. Higher and sustained economic growth has, all over the world, been the surest and most time tested means of raising living standards and reducing poverty. Further, given that it is a functioning democracy, economic policy in India can often be dictated by political expediency as political parties indulge in competitive populism in the face of improvements in social indicators such as literacy, infant mortality and the like lagging behind rises in the rate of economic growth. Thus the political economy of policy formulation is an important area of concern. Finally, an analysis of what policies can be undertaken given these constraints is an important indicator of potential welfare implications of policies for such a large section of humanity. Several recent reviews of Indias recent growth experience exist (Rodrik and Subrahmanian, 2004, Kelkar, 2004, and Thirlwell, 2004 are three examples). The value added of the present paper is to place Indias growth experience within a broader political economy perspective. It documents the broad contours of economic growth in India; it then analyzes some emerging obstacles to higher economic growth and finally the prospects for accelerating the economic reforms program to place India on a sustained higher economic growth path

The challenge of fiscal reform in India

This paper argues that the growth performance of the Indian economy, while commendable by the standards of the pre reform period, is not adequate to rid India of the bane of poverty in a short enough time period. Two reasons are identified for this inadequate growth performance viz., low rate of savings and investment and poor productivity of public sector investments. The paper then discusses the design of fiscal policy to help raise the rate of saving and investment and improve the productivity of public expenditures

SOME IMPERATIVES OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION: TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY AND OWNERSHIP OF INPUTS IN INDIAN AGRICULTURE

This paper attempts to ascertain the requirements (in terms of ownership of factors of production) for successful adaptation to the Green Revolution in Indian agriculture. We estimate stochastic production frontiers for wheat in two Indian states: Haryana (which has been significantly affected by the Green Revolution) and Madhya Pradesh (where the Green Revolution has had much less effect). In Haryana, but not in Madhya Pradesh, larger farm size and ownership of land and machines positively influence technical efficiency. Thus, with the Green Revolution advancing, land consolidation and vesting of clear ownership rights of land and capital with farmers becomes important.Environmental Economics and Policy,

The First Ten K R Narayanan Orations

Politics and government; Economic conditions; Economic policy; Indi