Investment and Technology Policies

This United Nations Policy Note on Investment and Technology provides practical guidance on how to operationalize alternative equitable and employment-generating investment and technology policies in National Development Strategies. This Policy Note has been developed in cooperation with UN agencies, and has been officially reviewed by distinguished academics/ development specialists such as Jose Antonio Ocampo, Jomo K.S. and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.investment and technology policies, development planning

Governance, Growth and Poverty Reduction

Poverty reduction is a function of economic growth, income distribution and distribution changes. Governance can impact both growth and income distribution. The dominant market-enhancing governance paradigm seeks to enhance the efficiency of markets through ‘good governance’ reforms, ostensibly to trigger or sustain growth. ‘Pro-poor’ good governance reforms purport to enhance the scale and efficiency of service delivery to the poor. The good governance approach to enhancing growth is disputed. Neither theory nor evidence strongly support the plausibility of significantly reducing poverty through the good governance agenda. Alternative governance approaches for addressing poverty are contrasted favourably with the currently dominant paradigm.Governance, growth, income distribution, poverty

Governance, Economic Growth and Development since the 1960s

Liberal economists have developed a framework of good governance as market-enhancing governance, focusing on governance capabilities that reduce transaction costs and enable markets to work more efficiently. In contrast, heterodox economists have stressed the role of growth-enhancing governance, which focuses on governance capacities to overcome entrenched market failures in allocating assets, acquiring productivity-enhancing technologies and maintaining political stability in contexts of rapid social transformation. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but current policy exclusively focuses on the former, and ignores the strong empirical and historical evidence supporting the latter to the detriment of the growth prospects of poor countries.governance, market failures, transaction costs

GOVERNANCE AND ANTI-CORRUPTION REFORMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: POLICIES, EVIDENCE AND WAYS FORWARD

International institutions and in particular the World Bank and the IMF are rightly giving a great deal of attention to issues of governance in developing countries, and particularly corruption. While they are right to believe that governance matters, governance in the most successful developing countries has often been starkly at variance with the good governance model. Even the most successful developing countries have suffered from significant corruption and other governance failures during the early stages of their development. This should not be interpreted to mean that corruption and the goals of good governance are not important. Pressure to reduce corruption and move towards good governance is both necessary and desirable but these ends cannot be achieved unless attention is also given to other governance capacities required for accelerating and sustaining growth. The very desirable goals of good governance may be neither necessary nor sufficient for accelerating and sustaining development. We identify a number of different structural drivers of corruption that operate because of the poor fiscal capacities and structurally weak property rights of developing countries. These imply that aggregate corruption is likely to be high in all developing countries, but successful countries have institutions and governance capabilities that enable them to “manage” the structural drivers in ways that allow economic development and in turn create the conditions for a sustained improvement in good governance. In contrast, other developing countries lack these institutions and capabilities and suffer from poor economic prospects and political instability to varying extents. The challenge for developing countries is to learn the right lessons from the international experience and identify reform agendas appropriate and feasible for their own circumstances. Even the most successful anti-corruption strategies are unlikely to result in dramatic across-the-board improvements in most developing countries. But if they are properly designed to attack the most damaging effects of particular types of corruption, they may still be very successful in accelerating economic development and improving the conditions of political viability. The current governance and anti-corruption agendas supported by international agencies do not achieve this. They do not identify the structural drivers of corruption, and they do not identify feasible responses to these drivers that are likely to improve development prospects in particular countries. More worryingly, by setting broad anti-corruption and good governance goals they may be doing damage by setting unachievable targets for developing countries and diverting attention from critical governance reforms.

Governance, Growth and Development

The promotion of ‘good governance’ has become one of the pillars of development policies proposed by a large majority of development aid agencies. It is based on the view that ‘good governance’ is a pre-requisite for development. The author critically reviews the relationship between governance, growth and development and draws implications that are relevant for Sub-Saharan African countries. There is today a broad agreement that governance is critical for development but much of the consensus about how governance matters is still very deficient. The liberal revolution in development economics and policy thinking that took place in the 1980s had a critical effect on the debate about the role of the state and therefore about the governance capabilities that developing countries should aim to achieve. The emerging good governance agenda defends the need in developing countries to have policies that stabilise property rights and engage in rule-of-law reforms, carry out anti-corruption and anti-rent seeking strategies, engage in democratisation and accountability reforms, and sustain these through the mobilisation of the poor through the prioritisation of pro-poor spending by governments. This paper provides a critical assessment of the theoretical and empirical basis of these approaches to governance and development. It suggests that some of these reforms may be desirable but are not implementable to a significant extent in any developing country. Instead, other governance capabilities, namely the capabilities of states to intervene effectively and address market failures, are more effective to achieve improvements in resource mobilisation and the efficiency of investment allocation

A Typology of Corrupt Transactions in Developing Countries

Summary Economic theory has attempted to identify the conditions under which corruption has particularly harmful effects. This article evaluates these theories and argues that the classifications offered are misleading. Very successful interventionist states have suffered from corruption just as much as very unsuccessful ones. Policy responses to corruption require an understanding of the effects of corruption and the determinants of these effects. The fact which appears to have a strong effect in determining the harmfulness of corruption is the balance of power between the state and its clients. An alternative classification of the effects of corruption is suggested on this basis

Sustainable and Resilient Smart Water Grids: A Solution for Developing Countries

According to a United Nations report, the world population will increase from 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050. Further, the water stress level is more than 70% in 22 countries while in another 31 countries it is between 25% and 70%. More than 2 billion people live in these 53 countries which are all underdeveloped. Water use has increased by 1% per year since the 1980s, so global demand is expected to rise by 30% by 2050. Thus, efficient water grid management is imperative to ensure there is sufficient water for the future. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be used to create smart water grids to optimize water distribution, reduce waste and leakage, and resolve quality and overuse issues. In this work, a low cost, real-time, reliable and sustainable IoT based solution called SmartTubewell is proposed for smart water grid management. It is composed of two components, a sensor node installed at tube wells and an application layer on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for data analysis, storage and processing. The sensor node is based on a Raspberry Pi with integrated current and voltage sensors and a local database. The sensor data is transmitted to AWS using a cellular (GPRS) network. A comparison between the proposed system and SCADA is presented which shows that SmartTubewell has a much lower cost. A field test with multiple tube wells in Peshawar, Pakistan indicates that this is a suitable solution for developing countries

Fodder Yield, Nutrient Uptake and Quality of Oats (\u3cem\u3eAvena sativa\u3c/em\u3e L.) as Influenced by Different Agronomic Practices

The green fodder requirement and availability in India does not match and leaves a shortfall of about 63%. There is a little possibility of any tangible increase in fodder area due to competition from other economically competitive agricultural crops (Aulakh et al., 2012). Therefore, there is urgent need to maximize the tonnage and quality of fodder within the existing farming systems. Multicut nature of the crop ensures continuous supply of fodder. Kashmir valley possesses temperate type of climate, with snowfall and harsh conditions in the winter. Behaviour of crop under these conditions is entirely different from rest of country, which can be modified through different agronomic manipulations to derive maximum benefits. Sowing time has great impact on fodder yield. In agronomic techniques fertilizer management is the most important aspect. To improve supply of fodder over a period best cutting management needs to be evaluated. In view of these an experiment was undertaken to study the response of fodder oat to different sowing dates, fertility levels and cutting managements

De-Risking Private Power in Bangladesh: How Financing Design Can Stop Collusive Contracting

Collusive contracting with private power plants in Bangladesh has resulted in high power prices that cost the taxpayer around U$1 billion in subsidies. The main driver of collusive contracting is the unwillingness of politically unconnected firms to engage in a high-risk environment. To attract investment, the government has adopted a targeted risk absorption strategy that negotiates mark-ups with interested firms. We argue that this strategy cannot discover the minimum mark-up that would induce investment. Moreover, because only politically connected investors are likely to be bidding and negotiating, this approach encourages investors to set high mark-ups. An alternative strategy is competitive risk-mitigation that provides contestable subsidies from development finance institutions (DFIs), such as preferential finance and partial risk guarantees. Contestable subsidies work by reducing risks of unconnected investors, encouraging their participation to make collusion more difficult, and constraining mark-ups. To test our hypothesis, we collect a dataset on plant-level DFI support and prices from 58 private power plants in Bangladesh from 2004 to 2017. Our empirical analysis finds that financing instruments with contestable subsidies from DFIs are associated with a 26% reduction in plant-level prices controlling for plant capacity, size, and fuel type