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As recognised in the DAC Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations, interconnected challenges of governance, economic performance, insecurity and poverty are acute in fragile states, requiring close collaboration among defense, diplomacy, development and beyond. Good international engagement in fragile states requires a complex and coherent range of approaches and instruments if lasting peace is to be secured.
The study provides a synthesis of current whole-of-government approaches in seven donors’ administrations, identifying several challenges to a whole-of-government approach, including differences in mandates, approaches, resources and considerable transaction costs. Recommendations include the need for political commitment, the need to engage a wide range of actors, joint analysis, country-specific joint planning, and creating the right incentives structure and knowledge management systems for actors involved to adopt a comprehensive approach.
There are two serious failures that arise in the management of solid waste. The first relates to the existence of negative externalities in the individual decision-making over waste generation and disposal. When individuals decide on how much to consume and what to consume, they do not take into account how much waste they produce. Because the external costs of waste generation (such as air and water pollution) are ignored by individuals, more waste is produced and disposed of than is socially optimal. The second serious failure relates to the ways in which waste collection services are typically financed. More often than not, individuals pay for waste disposal in lump sums through general taxes or flat payments to local governments or private collectors. Hence, waste disposal costs are not fully reflected in the prices households face at the margin. Even if these flat charges included both the private and external costs of waste production and disposal, individuals would still face zero prices for additional waste produced, and would thus tend to produce (and dispose of) more waste than if they were to pay for the additional garbage according to its social marginal cost.
The Ninth OECD/World Bank/IMF Annual Global Bond Market Forum held on 22-23 May 2007 in Paris, France, highlighted that there has been very sharp growth in the use of derivative instruments in both mature and emerging market countries. The use of derivative instruments is helping public debt managers in their portfolio management operations and in supporting market development. Several institutional and structural impediments, however, remain toward the more active use of derivative products. Most developed market debt managers use derivative instruments for debt management purposes, while this is the case for only a handful of emerging markets. Several emerging markets, though, are taking steps towards developing the legal environment necessary to support derivative markets, and are addressing the challenges posed by illiquidity of the underlying cash market, deficiencies in prudential regulation, and restrictions on market participation.
This paper argues that it is the condition of the university for the time being to live with incompatibility of identity and purpose, and to tolerate an intolerable breadth of mission. This predicament is frequently masked, mercifully perhaps, by confusion of language used to analyse the role of the university, and unclear thinking about how this is best portrayed.
As will quickly become evident, this is relevant and important both to the leadership and management of individual institutions and for policy in respect of mass higher education as a system, in particular to the subject of diversity.
Globalisation is profoundly changing economic development, forcing development officials to adopt a regional approach founded on what a particular region does best or its competitive advantage. Globalisation has also placed a new premium on innovation as the critical fuel to economic success – for firms, regions and countries. Universities lie at the nexus of these two powerful trends: they are rooted in regions, and they are perhaps the most important engines of innovation. Drawing on recent experience in the United States, this paper explores this nexus by addressing three critical questions: (1) Why is regional competitiveness the new paradigm for regional development? (2) What must regions do to compete? (3) What can be done to connect university innovation with regional development? The paper concludes that new mechanisms are needed to connect university innovation with regional development. Public policy can encourage these mechanisms by addressing twin needs in the newly forming “market” for regional innovation: encouraging universities to make innovation available in ways that regions can easily tap, and helping regions understand which innovations are most critical to their economic future.
This paper uses “extreme-bound”-type analysis to revisit the determinants behind widely differing economic growth in Russian regions. Using data of 77 regions for 1993-2004, it separately examines the growth drivers for the phase of economic decline up to 1998, and for the period of strong growth afterwards. Looking at forty variables considered to be potentially related to growth, it determines, for each of the two periods, the ones robustly associated with Russian economic performance. Among the variables considered are proxies of politico-institutional features, indicators of economic reform, and measurements of both economic and non-economic initial conditions. The main findings, based on close to one million regressions, are as follows: during the period of economic decline up to 1998, differences in Russian regional growth were almost entirely driven by initial conditions, with resource and human capital endowments, industrial structure, and geographical location playing the dominant roles. However, since the 1998 crisis, the importance of initial conditions has declined significantly, and is now basically reduced to hydrocarbon wealth and advantageous geographical location. More reform-oriented policies, as well as better regional leadership are found to have come to make a significant difference. These results point to determinants of economic performance in periods of actual economic decline being quite different from those in “normal” times of economic growth.
he “Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of India Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy”1 (hereinafter referred to as “U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement” or “123 agreement”) acknowledges a shift in international strategies and relations in both countries. As to India, it marks the end of nuclear isolation resulting from constraints, embargoes and controls and instead opens the path for nuclear commerce. With respect to the United States it entails a major geo-strategic ally in the evolving South- Asia region and promises large commercial benefits to the U.S. nuclear sector. This so called “nuclear deal” constitutes one of the major political, economic and strategic relationships developing between the two countries since 2001. It will lead to the separation of military and civilian nuclear installations in India, the latter to be placed under the safeguards system of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It thus de facto accepts India in the club of nuclear weapon states within the meaning of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)2 although it is not party to this treaty, refuses adhering to it, officially possesses nuclear weapons and is not subject to a comprehensive system of safeguards.