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Against the background of Brazil’s highly unequal distribution of income and wealth, and its history of alienation and passivity of the poor, in particular during the years of political authoritarianism, this paper shows how an active civil society, driven by ethical concerns, has, since 1993, nudged democratic government at different levels as well as enterprises of the public sector into undertakings which alleviate poverty directly in various ways and open up new perspectives for a number of the poor.
While the reach and impact of these programmes is still rather limited in the face of the country’s 32 million “extremely poor” (1990), and data are lacking for a comprehensive evaluation, the approach followed deserves attention as a large-scale experiment which introduces new political practices, based on dialogue between administrations and committees of citizens about priorities as well as implementation and monitoring of activities. In political terms, the main achievement is ...
Using new surveys on more than 40 000 respondents in twenty countries that account for 72% of global CO2 emissions, we study the understanding of and attitudes toward climate change and climate policies. We show that, across countries, support for climate policies hinges on three key factors: the perceived effectiveness of the policies in reducing emissions, their perceived distributional impacts on lower-income households (inequality concerns), and their own household’s gains and losses. We also show that information that specifically addresses these key concerns can substantially increase the support for climate policies in many countries. Explaining how policies work and who can benefit from them is critical to foster policy support. Simply making people more worried about climate change is not an effective strategy to foster policy support. Furthermore, we identify several socioeconomic and lifestyle factors – most notably education, political leanings, car usage, and availability of public transportation – that are significantly correlated with both policy views and overall reasoning and beliefs about climate policies. Yet, it is difficult to predict beliefs or policy views based on these characteristics only.
Sweden ranks among the best OECD countries in terms of gender equality. Women have a high employment rate, outperform men in education and are well represented in government and parliament. Nevertheless, without further policy measures, achieving parity is still a distant prospect in several areas. Wage differences between genders persist; women are under-represented on private company boards, in senior management positions, in many well-paid and influential professions and among entrepreneurs. Hence, there is scope to make further progress on gender equality. The share of the parental leave reserved for each parent should be increased further, as inequality in leave-taking and long parental leaves harm women’s career prospects. Fighting stereotypes in education is necessary to improve women’s access to professions where they are under-represented. Government programmes need to promote women’s entrepreneurship further. Special attention should also be paid to the integration of foreign-born women, whose employment rate is much lower than for their male counterparts.
The pandemic has highlighted significant gaps in social protection, in particularamong informal workers. With around 60% of workers in informal jobs, many of those most in need of social protection are left behind. The government has attempted to fill this gap with non-contributory benefits, but coverage and benefit levels are low. Better-off formal workers have access to a full range of social protection benefits, involving large-scale public subsidies that widen the gap. Labour informality and social protection coverage are interlinked, as high social contributions are one of the main barriers to formal job creation. Ensuring some universal basic social protection, while simultaneously lowering the cost of formal employment, would reduce labour informality, poverty and inequality and raise productivity, all of which are long-standing challenges in Colombia.
This report provides guidelines on methodological and conceptual issues. Part one covers methodological aspects while part two deals with concepts, definitions and example questions. Recommendations are based on input from 14 countries...
This paper aims at providing an overview of the theoretical considerations and a review of the empirical literature on the relationship between finance and growth. Section I describes the role of financial development in economic growth at the macro level, both theoretically and empirically. Section II examines the role of corporate finance in firm-level performance, especially focusing on the role of “internal funds” and “internal capital markets”. Section III presents a comparative analysis of financial systems, and analyses both the Asian crisis and the US venture capital phenomenon from this perspective. Section IV presents some policy implications and conclusions ...
Climate change is a major political and economic challenge. This paper sketches out its relevance for the financial sector. Necessary low-carbon investments imply a significant yet manageable financing gap. However, we argue that beyond capital mobilisation that has attracted most attention until now, the main challenge is ensuring a transition-consistent capital reallocation. The financial sector has a key role to play in that respect, complementary to appropriately designed climate policies. To help the financial system fulfil its role, the understanding of the economics of climate change should be deepened and a sector-wide businessoriented appropriation of these issues should be promoted.
JEL classification: Q54, E10, E44, G12, G14, G21, G22, G23, G28.
Keywords: Climate change, low carbon, climate finance, green finance, investment, capital allocation, financial system, risks
This paper surveys a broad range of studies and highlights the main findings of the empirical literature regarding business finance and productivity. Numerous studies analyse the productivity effects of financial development and frictions. The results suggest: 1) Financial development likely has favourable effects on productivity growth; 2) financial frictions that impede the efficient flow of finance can mitigate the positive effects through a variety of channels; and 3) the magnitudes of productivity costs of financial frictions generally appear modest in financially developed economies but are considerably larger in developing economies. The paper also reviews studies of the influence of specific mechanisms on productivity, such as human capital, corporate finance, financial sector efficiency, equity finance and venture capital. Some policies that hamper productivity growth include inefficient insolvency regimes that impede exit of low-productivity firms, poorly developed contract monitoring and enforcement systems between banks and firms, collateral constraints that impair resource reallocation and imperfect bank supervisory practices that diminish productive capital reallocation through distorted lending practices.
Can devaluations and exchange controls be co-ordinated at the regional or global level, to lessen their beggar-thy-neighbour character? Probably not without co-ordination mechanisms among monetary and fiscal authorities like the ones found in the EU. How precisely the mechanisms may apply to CEFTA, ASEAN or Mercosul remains to be thoroughly investigated. The claim of this paper is that there does not seem to be a better perspective that the one defended here.
Over and above the parallels between the 1997-99 emerging markets crisis and the Mexican devaluation of December 1994, the lessons from the crises in the ERM may thus be helpful in designing a new international financial architecture. In effect, the crises were overcome by the ERM code of conduct. With the experience gathered during the first year of the euro, a new code of conduct may be developing, which acknowledges the importance of international banking supervision, including better risk management along the lines proposed ...
Research in a number of countries has shown that many people lack the ability to manage their money well. At the same time, the consequences, both to individuals and to society at large, of a failure by people to take adequate steps to safeguard their financial future are becoming increasingly serious.
Life annuities – financial products that help individuals convert a lump-sum of wealth into a guaranteed life-long income stream – have an important role to play in providing a secure source of retirement income. Because annuities provide valuable insurance against longevity risk, much of the theoretical work in economics suggests that life annuities ought to comprise a large share of the retirement portfolios of most households. Yet around the world, voluntary annuity markets remain small.