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weekly roundup

Friday Roundup: International Women’s Day, Water ATMs and Crop Research

As we celebrate the 102nd International Women’s Day today, what do women of the world hope to achieve this year? An end to gender-based violence. The Guardian has put together a page to highlight the voices from all over the globe on tackling violence and discrimination against women. Read them all here on this interactive page.

While on the subject of Women’s Day, where is best place to be a working woman in the rich world? Apparently, the answer is New Zealand. The Economist has compiled a “glass-ceiling index” to show where women have the best chance of equal treatment at work. See the index here, which compares data from 26 countries.

Friday Roundup: Rural Programmes, Middle-Income Trap, Slums in Africa, Currency Wars, and Open States

By encompassing social, political, and feudal factors in development, Rural Support Programmes have enjoyed success in India and Pakistan for the past 30 years. Why did they work? For one, the approach acknowledges that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ and second, it looks for a holistic growth. Read the article on the Guardian to find out how communities can unlock their own potential.

What is a middle-income trap? The concept has been quite popular for some time, but only recently has been tested and defined. The concept broadly defines the fast-growing economies that suffered steep slowdown, and hence their dilemma of being caught between poverty and prosperity. There has been a lot of debate on poverty or prosperity, but it has substantially benefitted from work done by Barry Eichengreen, Donghyun Park, and Kwanho Shin. Read the post on Free Excgange to get an insight on their work.

Friday Roundup: Currency wars, Microfinance, Future Orientation Index, Remittances

Currency wars actually have some redeeming impact, argues Matthew O’Brien in The Atlantic. Read it here.

A lively debate is under way on David Roodman’s Microfinance Open Book Blog.


According to the “Future Orientation Index” created by academics from University College London (UCL) and Warwick University, the number of searches on Google for ‘future’ are an indication of a nation’s -- or its citizen’s -- forward thinking. By analyzing more than 45 billion Google queries, the index ranks Germany as the most forward thinking nation in 2012. If you are curious about others, take a look here. 

Friday Roundup: Climate Change, China, Cash Transfers & Bill's Letter

With warnings on the effects of climate change becoming starker with every passing day, good news came in the form of a story that the world's biggest seed banks are getting funding to help protect and develop new varieties of seeds resistant to climate change and other threats.

More sobering was a post by the World Bank's Phil Hay about Mozambique's recent devastating floods and public sector measures to help the country recover.

Friday Roundup: Migration and Development, Global Economy and Innovation, and WDR App

About 3% of the world's people live outside the country of their birth. What does this mean for the migrants, and their countries – most of which are developing? The Guardian is inviting comments and questions on the topic of migration and its impact on development for its monthly podcast. To learn more, read “Talk point: what is the impact of migration on development?,” which also quotes the latest remittances figures from the World Bank.

According to the latest edition of Global Economic Prospects, (GEP), the global GDP  is estimated to grow by  2.4 percent in 2013, marked by weaker growth in  developed countries. With the global economy remaining fragile, a return to the “good times” seems farther now. The Economist argues that the economic stagnation of the rich countries is also hurting innovation, which has direct links to economic growth. Read the post from to know more. While on this topic, according to figures from the GEP, the value of exports from developing countries to other developing countries (“South-South” trade) now exceeds exports from poor countries to rich ones (“South-North” trade). Read the full article on The Economist here.

Friday round up: Social media innovation, a handy graphic, inequality, and Kaushik in the news

From tracking World Bank projects to Twitter conversations with Rwanda's health minister, technology is driving innovation. Read about it in ‘Poverty Matters.’

The fastest growing and shrinking economies in 2013 are laid out in a handy graphic in The Economist online.

The study of distribution and inequality is ‘au courant’ among economists these days and Branko Milanovic of the World Bank’s Research Group contributes to the debate in a post on the Harvard Business Review’s blog platform.

Year-end Reflections and Trends for 2013: Final Friday Roundup for 2012

It’s the end of the year, which means there are all sorts of retrospectives on the big things that happened in 2012.  Here’s a list of interesting articles that recap the year gone by.

• Andres Marroquin’s blog lists the top ten economic papers of 2012. Topping the list is a working paper from the Journal of Politics 201 titled ‘Economic Conditions and the Quality of Suicide Terrorism’. See more papers here.

• Consider yourself an aficionado of the latest in global development issues? Then test your knowledge by taking a quiz put together by The Guardian.

Friday Roundup: China’s Cities, India’s healthcare, US jobs & the Fiscal Cliff

In “How Cities Can Save China” Henry Paulson, former US Treasury Secretary and current head of the Paulson Institute, argues in this week’s New York Times that better city planning will allow China’s investments to be more balanced, debt levels to be lowered, pollution to be eased, and a consumption windfall to be realized.

Friday Roundup: Kaushik Basu meets CSOs; debating India’s jobs scheme; and tracking fast growing economies

In an interesting post on “From Poverty to Power,” Duncan Green writes about our Chief Economist, Kaushik Basu. Commenting on a recent roundtable for CSOs held in London, Duncan highlights Kaushik’s views on redistribution, taxation, economists, climate change and  multi-player sudoku. With his prior experience in the Indian Government and emphasis on thinking outside the ‘reductionist stereotypes,’ Duncan writes that Kaushik “could prove to be an interesting and innovative voice at the Bank…” Read the entire post here.

On November 16, Kaushik delivered a lecture at Brown University titled ‘From the Slopes of Raisina Hill: India’s Economic Reforms and Prospects’. Watch the video here. He’s posted a power point on ‘The Global Crisis and the Impact On Emerging Economies’ that was delivered at a UNU-Wider seminar on November 26.

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