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Open Forum Gender: Getting to Equal

World Development Report 2012

Arab World: A New Social Contract

January 2008

Surfing, connecting, acting

From the "highlights" of the 2008 Digital Future Report:

The study found that participation in online community membership has particularly dramatic effects on participation in social causes. Three-quarters of online community members said they use the Internet to participate in communities related to social causes, with 40 percent saying that they use the Internet at least monthly to participate in such communities. Eighty-seven percent of online community members are participating in social causes that are new to them since their involvement in online communities began. And, a large and growing percentage of members -- now 55 percent -- say they feel as strongly about their online communities as they do about their real-world communities.

A force to be reckoned with, whether you are an NGO looking to broaden your support base or a business developing a CSR strategy. (but see here for a different perspective from the UK http://www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080116.html)

CGAP: Policy needs a balanced approach to mobile banking and other technologies

A new CGAP/DFID paper addresses the policy implications of branchless banking. Regulating Transformational Branchless Banking: Mobile Phones and Other Technology to Increase Access to Finance is based on assessments of policy and regulation in seven key countries, including interviews with more than 500 people from governments, the private sector, and international organizations in Brazil, India, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia and South Africa.

While much of the current buzz is around mobile phones, other branchless banking applications are gaining traction as well. Brazil's increase in access to finance has been accomplished largely through the more than 95,000 banking "correspondents"—local merchants and post offices that act as agents for banks, equipped with card-swipe and barcode-reading point-of-sale (POS) terminals. In Russia, a broad network of bank ATMs, POS terminals, and online e-money providers offer transaction services outside of traditional branch offices.

Want to know more? Read the full report and access country-by-country information.

Partial credit guarantee scheme

Though credit guarantee schemes can improve access to finance and distribute credit risk, questions remain about their impact on credit constraints, small bank lending, entrepreneurship, SME finance, and on non-guaranteed lending.

On March 13, 2008 at the World Bank, speakers will present the latest empirical evidence from developed and developing countries on the subject.

The two-day conference held in Washington, D.C. is free and open to public on a first come, first serve basis. To register please send an email to Colleen Mascenik at cmascenik@worldbank.org.

Doing Business across Colombia

Based on surveys from Bogotá, Colombia took a 66th position out of 178 in the Doing Business 2008 report and became this year's top reformer. But as the subnational report (en español) released today shows, there are vast discrepancies on the ease of doing business among the county's 12 main cities.

Municipal requirements make up 7 of the 19 procedures required to start a business in Neiva, but only 1 of 13 in Villavicencio—the city with the fewest start-up procedures.

The graph below shows the time required to enforce contracts across 12 Colombian cities:

Columbia_contract_enforcement

It's all about sharing

Nokia_2600_1209 Nokia found that over 50 percent of users in India and Pakistan and 30 percent in Vietnam share their phones. Accordingly, the world's largest cell phone maker released two new models optimized for sharing. Among the new features are a cost-tracking application, multiple phone books, and software in 80 languages.

Paying attention to customers in emerging markets has paid off. The Finnish firm has posted record quarterly results: over 77 million units sold in Asia, the Middle East and Africa - almost doubling its sales in Europe and North America (42.3 million).

Financial liberalization can make your economy more resilient if...

A new paper compares changes in financing by international banks to domestic banks after the 1998 Russian debt crisis. The author finds that financing increased to banks with international equity holders when compared with their purely domestic counterparts.

Financial liberalization can make you more resilient to global credit shocks, but only if you invite foreigners rather than just borrow their money.

You know it, when you see it

Social entrepreneurship may be hard to define, but has managed to carve out a space for itself in business thinking.

At Davos, Bill Gates spoke of creative capitalism calling on the private sector to channel market forces to better address the needs of the poor, even if it sounds unreasonable to some.

Critical thinking at the bottom of the pyramid

Can information and communication technologies (ICT) foster critical and entrepreneurial thinking at the bottom of the pyramid? This was one of the key themes that emerged from the GK3 conference last month.

Take for example the One Laptop for Child initiative. Interestingly, the debate did not center around the long-term sustainability of the project, but whether it can help move education systems in emerging markets away from the hierarchical, rule-memorizing approach.

Once you start seeing users of ICT in developing countries as creative contributors, a whole new world of opportunities emerges. Backed by InfoDev, the Equinox project allows teachers, trainers and companies in emerging markets to build and share e-learning curricula.

Public Opinion and Authoritarian Regimes

Is public opinion a force for good government or not? If recent events in Burma, Pakistan and Georgia show anything at all it is that public opinion is ultimately  the basis of power and legitimacy. Which is something several political philosophers have told us for over 200 years, but it is fascinating to watch these struggles unfold.

And it explains why authoritarian regimes are always keen to control public opinion by:

Is there life after oil?

Oil In light of a record labor force growth in parts of the Middle East, some question the ability of Arab countries to accommodate this demographic bulge and create enough jobs for the population.

Haward Pack and Marcus Noland – the authors of "The Arab Economies in a Changing World" - argue that relying oil hefty revenues alone won't solve the problem.

Becoming more globally competitive is the way for the future, they say, but it won't be easy given China's established dominance in the manufacturing and India's in the services industry and the region's overall difficult business climate.

Fridays Academy: Gender and Macroeconomics

Like every Friday,  based on Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

Measuring Gender Inequalities

In order to fully appreciate gender as an analytical category in macroeconomics and macroeconomic policy, one needs appropriate data and tools – statistics and modeling.  For the most part, gender measurement issues have only been addressed in the past thirty years or so and remain a work-in-progress.  Data collection methods are not always gender sensitive for a number of reasons. First, managers, researchers and technical staff may not be aware of gender issues in the policies and programs and/or lack experience with gender issues and methods. Second, surveys frequently interview the household head, which in most cases is male. Third, the nature of gender is often sensitive and formal interviews are not the best way to capture information on sensitive topics (domestic violence for example) and finally, women may not be able to speak freely in interviews or to attend or speak at community meetings. (World Bank, 2001). Thus for all of these reasons and not withstanding that, as noted in previous posts, the emergence of gender as an analytical category is relatively recent, the measurement of gender is an ongoing issue. Yet the case for measuring gender is a strong one.

New micro and small business tax toolkit

Though most agree that taxes are important and necessary, the question: "how to best design them?" remains.

Rapid Response has added a SME tax toolkit with advice for policymakers on how to bring and keep small business in the formal economy.

Cooking at the bottom of the pyramid

Bop_stove The World Health Organization estimates that 1.6 million people die each year from toxic indoor air. The main culprit is carbon monoxide released with smoke as a byproduct of incomplete combustion, when using traditional stoves.

Given that nearly half of the world population and 80 percent of rural households cook with traditional stoves, Environfit - a Colorado-based organization - saw a commercial opportunity and created a line of clean-burning ceramic stoves. Their first target demographics are Indian women. Prices will range from $10 to $200.

An Acehnese Biker Chick

Sabang_ride_2 When most people think about Sabang, they think about diving. For good reason – the diving spots here are among the best in the world. But there’s more to Sabang than diving, as I discovered by chance. It also has biker chicks.

After yet another fabulous weekend of diving, I took the minibus to Balohan, where the ferry port is. But for the first time ever, I could not get a ticket. Normally you can get on the boat by slipping some cash to the crew. But this time it was impossible. When the boat pulled away from the dock, there were people literally hanging off the railings. Definitely a game for younger people than myself.

Luckily, my Indonesian is now good enough to get me through situations like this. I found a little hotel nearby for only 60,000 Rp, leaving just enough for the return ticket and a few meals. Then I decided to go for a good long walk. I was quite a sight – a foreigner huffing along on foot, gushing with sweat. My biggest problem was turning down offers for rides. Saya jalan-jalan saja, I explained. I'm just going for a walk.

Smart farming in Africa

[…] telling farmers to grow more is not enough; even giving them the freedom to sell to whomever they wish is not enough. Farmers need cash buyers. Without willing customers, paradoxically, growing more food can grievously hurt farmers—it raises costs and saddles them with worthless surpluses

G. Pascal Zachary has written an excellent piece in the Wilson Quarterly recounting the evolution of farming on the continent since the 1960s.

National Income Statistics online course

Prof. Barbara Fraumeni will present her online course "National Income Statistics" from Feb. 29 - March 21 at statistics.com.  Participants can interact with Prof. Fraumeni over a period of 3 weeks via a private discussion board.

This course covers the essentials of how National Accounts statistics are compiled. Participants will learn what Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI) and their components are, and what they mean. Underlying concepts will be explained. Major GDP components include consumption, investment, government expenditure and net exports. In addition, the various accounts:  household, business, financial and balance sheet, and general government, will be covered.  Examples will be used from the national accounts of a number of countries.

Registration and details

Davos 2008

Wef It's that time of year again. In the sleepy alpine town of Davos, business, government and civil society leaders have come together for the 38th annual World Economic Forum. This year's theme is "The Power of Collaborative Innovation."

The forum has its own blog and the past events are availalbe through webcasts. See also Forbes ask CEOs the Davos question: "to go or not to go?"

Climate policy map

Climate_policy_map Econsense created an interactive database for all-things climate. Much like our Do-Your-Own-Analysis, it allows to compare and contrast data across countries, in this case, on topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, fuel tax, emissions trading and biofuel production.

When do enterprises prefer informal credit?

Could enterprises voluntarily choose to tap informal credit markets to avoid the additional scrutiny or even harassment that engaging with formal financial institutions might invite?

A recent paper, using firm-survey data for 29 countries, suggests so. Fourteen percent of firms in this sample rely exclusively on informal finance and the percentage goes up as corruption, complexity of taxation (but interestingly not tax rates) and property registration increase.

Not so green after all

Ceres_report_2 Ceres, a coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations, believes that the financial services industry – with nearly $6 trillion in market capitalization – should play a role in combating climate change.

Most recently, Ceres released a first comprehensive assessment of how the world's 40 largest banks fulfill their commitments to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The study found that, despite an overall widespread positive trend, only 12 banks made climate change a governance priority; only 6 said they were calculating carbon risk in their portfolio and "no bank has set a policy to avoid investments in carbon-intensive projects such as coal-fired power plants."

Not so green after all

Ceres_report Ceres, a coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations, believes that the financial services industry – with nearly $6 trillion in market capitalization – should play a role in combating climate change.

Most recently, Ceres released a first comprehensive assessment of how the world's 40 largest banks fulfill their commitments to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The study found that, despite an overall widespread positive trend, only 12 banks made climate change a governance priority; only 6 said they were calculating carbon risk in their portfolio and "no bank has set a policy to avoid investments in carbon-intensive projects such as coal-fired power plants."

Fridays Academy: Gender and Macroeconomics

As usual on Fridays, based on Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

 
Gender and Macroeconomics

Gender disparities are far from static and often change quite rapidly in response to changing socioeconomic conditions. Public policy that promotes gender equality can play an active role in bringing about successful growth and development.  Moreover, other aspects of an individual’s economic decision-making that is gender specific and/or that responds to public policy may also lead to different outcomes for macroeconomic aggregates. As noted by Stotsky (2006), public policies may enhance women’s employment possibilities with implications for taxation policy, social insurance, spending and other regulatory policies and structural reforms.  The improvement and reduction of gender inequalities summarized in Goal 3 of the Millennium Development Goals seeks to “promote gender equality and empower women”.  Moreover, gender equality lies behind two further goals in seeking equality in primary and secondary education with full enrollment of girls in primary education and improvements in maternal health.  Failing to acknowledge gender issues in macroeconomic policies can lead to unintended consequences as the experience with the structural adjustment policies attests.        

The missing extinguisher

Fire_extinguisher_3 Imagine yourself shopping for a simple product such as a fire-extinguisher. Would you check, before buying it, whether it is certified? Most people I polled said "no"; if it is on the shelf, it means that it satisfies the (sophisticated) rules and regulations set for its production.

Well, this assumption has been challenged during our recent work with the Tajikistan Fire Fighting Service.

While drafting together fire safety checklists to be used during inspections of small and medium enterprises, we came across this requirement: "the fire extinguisher needs to be certified."

No problem, at first we agreed with the need to provide consumers with the highest possible safety standards. But after digging a bit more into the issue, we discovered a couple of interesting facts:

  • Unfortunately no existing company in Tajikistan produces or sells "certified" extinguishers; and
  • None of those on the market have the required certificate.

Gender Equality, Growth and Poverty

The January issue of Poverty in Focus, the International Poverty Center's publication, is totally devoted to studying Gender Equality and its impact on Poverty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to read more about this, our Fridays Academy series in this blog is currently (every Friday) looking at Gender and Macroeconomics.