Africa notes

Moorereview.pdf (application/pdf Object)

2007-06-16T11:28:49.678Z

The developing countries’ interest in
agricultural liberalization had always been ambiguous. Aside from a few middle-income
members of the Cairns group, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Thailand, which are important
agricultural exporters, few developing countries looked at this area as a major source of gain.
Research done at the World Bank during the Uruguay Round had highlighted the possibility that
most Sub-Saharan African nations could actually end up worse off as a result of the rise in world
food prices produced by the reduction in European export subsidies. As Arvind Panagariya, an
economist at the University of Maryland and a strong supporter of trade liberalization, has noted,
the vast majority of the world’s poorest nations are net importers of agricultural products and
will end up paying higher prices for their imports if agricultural export subsidies in the rich
countries are phased out. For the most part, developing countries’ interests lay not in deep
liberalization in agriculture, but in restricting the agenda to a narrow set of issues and in fixing
the perceived shortcomings of the Uruguay Round.
There were ways in which the negotiating agenda could have been broadened in a truly
development-oriented way. To take the most glaring omission, the greatest demonstrable gains
to developing nations lie in an area in which the Doha framework makes no commitments at all:
the liberalization of temporary labor flows internationally. It is hard to identify any other issue
in the global economy with comparable potential for raising income levels in poor countries
while enhancing the efficiency of global resource allocation. Even a relatively small program of
temporary work visas in the rich countries could generate income gains for workers from poor
countries that exceed the predictions for all of the Doha proposals put together.

http://ipezone.blogspot.com/2007/03/is-income-inequality-rising-or-falling.ht...

2007-04-22T23:05:26.923Z

http://ipezone.blogspot.com/2007/03/is-income-inequality-rising-or-falling.html

Milanovic starts by tackling the question of what sort of inequality we are measuring. Concept 1 inequality is among the mean incomes of individual countries; tiny Lithuania population-wise counts for the same as large Russia. Concept 2 inequality weighs inequality according to each country's population size; Lithuania's average income would be extended to its 3.5M citizens, while Russia's average income to its 143M citizens. In an ideal world, we would have enough data to measure Concept 3 inequality, wherein we have data on the income of each individual in existence. While such data is nearly available in Western countries through household surveys, it is sparse in developing countries, to say the least.

Milanovic uses GDP per capita in 1995 dollars and on PPP terms for 120 countries from 1950 to 2000. It is an open-and-shut case here: inequality among countries unweighted for population size is increasing. From 1982 onwards, Concept 1 inequality has been on the rise with poor countries doing worse on the average than rich ones.

Managing Globalization » Business Blog » International Herald Tribune » Blog ...

2007-04-22T16:47:09.505Z

Chile has had impressive success over the past 15 years, after a major recession brought on by excessive faith in free market economics under Pinochet through insufficiently regulated banking. But there are alternative interpretations/explanations of that success. Chile did not follow many key elements of the Washington Consensus during its most successful years. It imposed capital controls. It only privatized part of its copper mines, and the privatized mines arguably did not perform better than the nationalized ones, though the profits were sent abroad, while the profits of the nationalized mines could be used in the nation’s efforts to develop. Government and foundations lay behind many of its successful development projects (such as its fisheries) - the kind of industrial policies that the Washington Consensus railed against. And unlike the Washington Consensus, Chile put considerable emphasis on social policies.

Chile did two things that were part of the Washington consensus - it liberalized trade and it limited its government deficits. The lesson is similar to that of the successful countries of East Asia: Globalization can help bring prosperity, but countries have to manage globalization on their own terms, in their own way. Chile did this. The countries that followed the Washington Consensus mantra have, by and large, not done so well.

Managing Globalization » Business Blog » International Herald Tribune » Blog ...

2007-04-22T16:45:34.535Z

Recently, the Center for Global Development reported that “under President Bush U.S. assistance to Africa has sharply increased, reaching $4.2 billion in 2005, nearly four times the level of 2000, and more than twice the level of any previous administration.”

Foreign aid | The non-aligned movement | Economist.com

2007-04-22T15:58:08.311Z

In July of that year, those world leaders who gathered for the G8 summit in Gleneagles in Scotland promised to increase aid to $130 billion, and double aid to Africa, by 2010

Managing Globalization » Business Blog » International Herald Tribune » Blog ...

2007-04-22T14:38:06.879Z

Aid works if it is not a handout of cash or consumption goods (such as food aid) but an investment in the productivity of the poor (such as roads, power, fertilizers, high-yield seeds for high-productivity agriculture and medicines for disease control). When aid is used for investment, as it was to help India achieve its Green Revolution, the result is not dependency but the escape from dependency. The high-benefit investment opportunities in most of the poorest countries include: education, health, infrastructure and agriculture.

Managing Globalization » Business Blog » International Herald Tribune » Blog ...

2007-04-22T14:37:13.521Z

aid agreements should be as practical as possible, focusing on the provision of measurable items (such as the number of anti-malaria bed nets, medicines or vaccinations), rather than transfers of cash

Managing Globalization » Business Blog » International Herald Tribune » Blog ...

2007-04-22T14:35:11.565Z

A. China’s recent entry in Africa is on the whole highly positive for Africa. China is acting as a buyer of African commodities, boosting their prices and increasing African incomes. China is of course a supplier of low-cost goods and services. And China is becoming a significant donor. The West is complaining that China is not following “good behavior” as a donor, but the main complaints are because of jealously that China is encroaching on traditional U.S. and European geopolitical and economic turf. The fact is that the Europeans and Americans have been unreliable donors, promising one thing and doing another, or doing little of anything. China is much more pragmatic, helping African countries to build roads, power plants, and factories. Not all is ideal, of course, and never is. Commercial interests can make for unsavory friends, such as China’s apparent support for Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, but once again, the blemishes of siding with unsavory allies is certainly not unique to China.

Straight Talk - Aid Can Work - Finance & Development, March 2007

2007-04-22T14:29:27.243Z

Between the disbursement of foreign aid and eventual development outcomes, there is a long causality chain. This chain has three main links that shed light on what we do know about aid effectiveness. First is the link between country policies (macroeconomic stabilization, regulation, trade, public finance) and final outcomes. Although not perfect, a stock of knowledge exists on the development impact of such policies. Economic research and evaluation can generate this knowledge through ex ante and ex post analysis of national experiences and impact evaluations of specific interventions.

The second link is the ability of policymakers to make appropriate policy choices given existing knowledge—in other words, the quality of governance: bureaucratic capability, institutional capacity, checks and balances mechanisms, and so on.

The third link—or, in effect, the beginning point—is between external donors or aid agencies and policymakers or even policies. Agencies provide funds and technical assistance, both of which influence the policy debate. But they often also seek to impose conditionality even though they operate with imperfect knowledge and little control over implementation.

Our Word is Our Weapon / All that money - and for what?

2007-04-22T13:24:41.668Z