The huge costs of armed conflict, the great challenge of state failure, and the slow pace of international actions to address world poverty all point to weaknesses in the global institutional framework and the need for much more effective international cooperation. In this book, Kemal Dervis argues that it is time to build a new international governance structure, breaking away from a system that reflects the post World War II world toward one that is appropriate to the realities and requirements of the 21st century. He proposes a reform of the international institutional architecture based on high-level governance in both the political and economic domains by a renewed and modernized United Nations. Navigating between careful realism and bold idealism, he formulates a coherent vision encompassing both institutional reform and new ideas for policies supported by the specialized institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the UN agencies themselves, and regional institutions such as the regional development banks. In this plea for "better" globalization, Dervis proposes that, under the legitimizing umbrella of the UN, the specialized institutions deal with the deep causes of the obstacles to poverty reduction and instability rather than their immediate manifestations. He recognizes the great potential that more and freer trade can have for accelerating growth throughout the world. He also stresses, however, that for this potential to be unleashed, the hearts and minds of people must be won by transforming not only the WTO framework but the entire governance of the international economic system into something that is perceived as more legitimate and more responsive to the concerns of the developing world as well as wealthy and creditor nations.

A Better Globalization: Legitimacy, Governance, and Reform

Business & Money

Dervis, Kemal

Ozer, Ceren

International

Center for Global Development

This book advocates adding more open and radical regionalism to strategies for the financing of economic and social development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Editors Nancy Birdsall and Liliana Rojas-Suarez argue that agreements among countries within regions, rather than detracting from an open multilateral system, can promote greater integration into the global trading and financial system by helping to build the domestic institutions that developing countries need to cope with the challenges of the global economy. The essays in this volume point to the unrealized potential of regionalism in promoting not only reduction of trade barriers, but shared investment in infrastructure and enhanced policy cooperation in development of financial markets. The book also offers fresh insights on how regional development banks can catalyze collective action.

Financing Development: The Power of Regionalism

Economics

Greenprint

Aaditya Mattoo

In this book, Nicolas Van de Walle identifies 26 countries that are extremely poor and grew little if at all in the 1990s. His sample excludes North Korea and countries where civil war explains some of their failure to grow (Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tajikistan and others). The 26 countries have limited infrastructure and human capital and the small size of their markets deter private savings and investment. Aid was meant to help overcome these problems, and these countries received a lot. Yet they have failed to grow. What is wrong? Is foreign aid a solution or part of the problem? What changes might make aid more effective? Given these countries require the financial and technical resources of the West, why haven't aid programs made a difference? Van de Walle blames their economic failure mostly on the venality and incompetence of their political leadership. He analyzes the contradictions and tensions faced by the aid community in poorly run countries, providing a sobering analysis of the perverse effects of aid where the politics is all wrong. Too often, resources provided by foreign aid keep the wrong government in office, and undermine adoption of economic as well as political reforms. Bad government combined with aid, in short, hurts poor countries – and particularly the poorest people in those countries. Despite good intentions, little progress has been made in implementing announced "reforms" of the aid business itself. A constituency for reform is lacking, in the donor countries and in the recipient countries, where those in power benefit from the status quo.

Overcoming Stagnation in Aid-Dependent Countries

Van de Walle, Nicolas

Making a commitment in advance to buy vaccines if and when they are developed would create incentives for industry to increase investment in research and development. New commercial investment would complement funding of research and development by public and charitable bodies, accelerating the development of vital new vaccines for the developing world. This report presents the proposal from theory to practice, by showing how a commitment can be consistent with ordinary legal and budgetary principles. By creating arrangements that devote the same scientific effort to diseases of the poor as we put into diseases of the rich, we can make a lasting contribution to the defeat of poverty.

Making Markets for Vaccines: Ideas to Action

Is foreign direct investment good for development? Moving beyond the findings of his previous book Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Development? (CGD and IIE, 2005), Theodore H. Moran presents surprisingly good —and startlingly bad —news. The good news highlights how foreign direct investment can make a contribution to development significantly more powerful and more varied than conventional measurements indicate. The bad news reveals that foreign direct investment can also distort host economies and polities with consequences substantially more adverse than critics and cynics have imagined. This book rigorously examines the principal controversies and debates about FDI in manufacturing and assembly, extractive industries, and infrastructure, in light of new evidence and analysis. Written in engaging prose, it identifies how developed and developing countries, multilateral lending agencies, and civil society can work in concert to harness foreign direct investment to promote the growth and welfare of developing countries.

Harnessing Foreign Direct Investment for Development: Policies for Developed and Developing Countries

Moran, Theodore H.

In Let Their People Come, Lant Pritchett discusses five "irresistible forces" of global labor migration, and the "immovable ideas" that form a political backlash against it. Increasing wage gaps, different demographic futures, "everything but labor" globalization, and the continued employment growth in low skilled, labor intensive industries all contribute to the forces compelling labor to migrate across national borders. Pritchett analyzes the fifth irresistible force of "ghosts and zombies," or the rapid and massive shifts in desired populations of countries, and says that this aspect has been neglected in the discussion of global labor mobility. Let Their People Come provides six policy recommendations for unskilled immigration policy that seek to reconcile the irresistible force of migration with the immovable ideas in rich countries that keep this force in check. In clear, accessible prose, this volume explores ways to regulate migration flows so that they are a benefit to both the global North and global South.

Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility

Pritchett, Lant

Girls' education, indisputably crucial to development, has received a lot of attention--but surprisingly little hardheaded analysis to inform practical policy solutions. In Inexcusable Absence, Maureen Lewis and Marlaine Lockheed propose new strategies for reaching the 70 percent of out-of-school girls who are "doubly disadvantaged" by their ethnicity, language, or other factors. The book will be an important tool for policymakers, informing interventions that can make a profound impact on the lives of the 60 million out-of-school girls.

Inexcusable Absence: Why 60 Million Girls Still Aren't in School and What to Do About It

Lewis, Maureen A.

Lockheed, Marlaine E.

Until recently, students of development have put much more energy into understanding the causes and consequences of absolute poverty than of inequality. But globalization—with its new opportunities for winners and losers, and its new insecurities and competitive pressures—is changing that. Nowhere is the issue of inequality more worrying than in Latin America, the setting for many of the world's most unequal societies. This book presents a dozen ideas or "tools" meant to make life in Latin America more equitable and fair for the great majority of its people. It suggests policies and programs for making tax structures more progressive; giving small businesses a chance; protecting labor mobility and workers' rights; tackling corruption head on; and raising the levels of quality, efficiency, and equity of the education systems. Change and reform in the direction of greater fairness will require not only political leadership and technical know-how on the part of government officials and legislators, but support and input from the progressive business community, the increasingly effective and vocal civil society, and students and intellectuals.

Fair Growth: Economic Policies for Latin America's Poor and Middle-Income Majority

Birdsall, Nancy

Torre, Augusto De La

Menezes, Rachel

History

Access to medicines is an issue of life or death for millions of people in poor countries. While great strides have been made in the last decade to improve health in poor countries -- more aid funding for drugs and vaccines; creation of funds to buy medicines; and concessionary pricing of medicines by some pharmaceutical firms –- the global supply chain that connects the dots –- production to people –- does not work well. The problem is poor forecasting of effective demand for products. Good forecasting is fundamental for key decisions, such as how much production capacity to build, which must be made years in advance of products being delivered. But donors that provide much of the money to purchase drugs, and a whole range of technical agencies and intermediaries, have yet to devise and coordinate among themselves, and with developing country governments, credible forecasts.   This report of the Global Health Forecasting Working Group, which was convened in early 2006 by senior fellow and director of programs Ruth Levine, provides an elegant analysis of the problem and a sensible agenda for action. Their report offers specific recommendations that apply across a range of products and that could be implemented by identifiable public and private organizations.   Among their recommendations is the creation of an "infomediary" -- a neutral third party to collect and disseminate essential data for forecasting demand. Another recommendation is that donors who are the major purchasers should accept more of the risks associated with unforeseen shocks to actual demand -- internalizing at least the shock that their own lack of predictable financing constitutes. That would imply, for example, that for some products donors move to contracts with manufacturers that include minimum quantity guarantees.   If these recommendations are implemented, manufacturers will benefit -- in reduced risk in the production of medical technologies; the donors or ministries of health will benefit from more reliable and accurate information on the price and availability of essential products; and most important, millions of families in the developing world will benefit -- in reduced disease and deaths and the personal agony those entail.

A Risky Business: Saving Money and Improving Global Health Through Better Demand Forecasting

Global Health Forecasting Working Group, Center for Global Development

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Center for Global Development publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Center for Global Development