Where the Line is Drawn. A Rejoinder to Ravallion

Martin Ravallion?s ?One Pager? No. 66 focuses on two key issues: the level of the World Bank?s international poverty line (IPL) and its conversion to other currencies and years. Having written on conversion before (?One Pager? No. 54), I can be brief. The purchasing power parities the Bank uses to convert its IPL into other currencies at best preserve purchasing power equivalence relative to the pattern of international household consumption. Similarly, the consumer price indices the Bank uses to convert the results to other years at best preserve purchasing power equivalence relative to each national household consumption basket. Such conversions are unsuitable within a poverty measurement exercise because the prices of necessaries play a much greater role in the lives of the poor than in general consumption expenditure. (...)Where the Line is Drawn. A Rejoinder to Ravallion

A Consistent Measure of Real Poverty: A Reply to Ravallion

In 1961, the United States Department of Agriculture published an Economy Food Plan carefully designed ?as a nutritionally adequate diet for short-term or emergency use? for poor people. This diet was updated and later re-branded as the Thrifty Food Plan. The lowest cost stated for this minimal diet was $80.40 per person per month in 1999. (...)A Consistent Measure of Real Poverty: A Reply to Ravallion

The Health Impact Fund: More justice and efficiency in global health

Some 18 million people die annually from poverty-related causes. Many more are suffering grievously from treatable medical conditions. These burdens can be substantially reduced by supplementing the rules governing pharmaceutical innovation. Established by the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement, these rules cause advanced medicines to be priced beyond the reach of the poor and steer medical research away from diseases concentrated among them. We should complement these rules with the Health Impact Fund. Financed by many governments, the HIF would offer any new pharmaceutical product the opportunity to participate, during its first ten years, in the HIF's annual reward pools, receiving a share equal to its share of the assessed global health impact of all HIF-registered products. In exchange, the innovator would have to agree to make this product available worldwide at the lowest feasible cost of manufacture. Fully consistent with TRIPS, the HIF achieves three key advances. It directs some pharmaceutical innovation toward the most serious diseases, including those concentrated among the poor. It makes all HIF-registered medicines cheaply available to all. And it incentivizes innovators to promote the optimal use of their HIF-registered medicines. Magnifying one another's effects, these advances would engender large global health gains.aid

A paradigm shift in theorizing about justice? A critique of Sen: Laura Valentini

In his recent book The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen suggests that political philosophy should move beyond the dominant, Rawls-inspired, methodological paradigm – what Sen calls ‘transcendental institutionalism’ – towards a more practically oriented approach to justice: ‘realization-focused comparison’. In this article, I argue that Sen's call for a paradigm shift in thinking about justice is unwarranted. I show that his criticisms of the Rawlsian approach are either based on misunderstandings, or correct but of little consequence, and conclude that the Rawlsian approach already delivers much of what Sen himself wants from a theory of justice

Justice and the Convention on Biological Diversity

Benefit sharing as envisaged by the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a relatively new idea in international law. Within the context of non-human biological resources, it aims to guarantee the conservation of biodiversity and its sustainable use by ensuring that its custodians are adequately rewarded for its preservation. Prior to the adoption of the CBD, access to biological resources was frequently regarded as a free-for-all. Bioprospectors were able to take resources out of their natural habitat and develop commercial products without sharing benefits with states or local communities. This paper asks how CBD-style benefit-sharing fits into debates of justice. It is argued that the CBD is an example of a set of social rules designed to increase social utility. It is also argued that a common heritage of humankind principle with inbuilt benefit-sharing mechanisms would be preferable to assigning bureaucratic property rights to non-human biological resources. However, as long as the international economic order is characterized by serious distributive injustices, as reflected in the enormous poverty-related death toll in developing countries, any morally acceptable means toward redressing the balance in favor of the disadvantaged has to be welcomed. By legislating for a system of justice-in-exchange covering nonhuman biological resources in preference to a free-for-all situation, the CBD provides a small step forward in redressing the distributive justice balance. It therefore presents just legislation sensitive to the international relations context in the 21st century

Another Flattened Dark Halo: Plar Ring Galaxy A0136-0801

Knowledge of the shape of dark matter halos is critical to our understanding of galaxy formation, dynamics, and of the nature of dark matter itself. Polar ring galaxies (PRGs) --- early-type galaxies defined by their outer rings of gas, dust and stars on orbits nearly perpendicular to those of the central host --- provide a rare probe of the vertical-to-radial axis ratio $(q_{\rho} = c/a)$ of dark halos. We present a Fabry-Perot velocity field for the H$\alpha$ gas in the kinematically-confirmed PRG \gal. By comparing ring orbits evolved in a generalized mass model to the observed ring velocity field and morphology of \gal, we conclude that $q_\rho \sim 0.5$ and rule out a spherical geometry.Comment: uuencoded gz-compressed file with figures include

Transnational Socio-economic Justice and the Right of Resistance

This article assesses Thomas Pogge's recent argument that it is sometimes justifiable to harm innocent persons in light of his claims about the causes of global poverty. It argues that if Pogge's two theses are correct then a third thesis follows: that those immiserated by the international system can legitimately resist the institutions responsible for the systemic violations of human rights, even at the cost of grievously harming innocent persons. This article does not assess the validity of Pogge's theses, but draws attention to a neglected topic in the debate on transnational economic justice: the right of resistance