This is a summary of materials available from ILO and World Bank.

The financial and economic crises of 2008 had gender-specific impacts and placed a disproportionate burden on women, in particular poor, migrant and minority women. Even though both women and men are affected by job losses, women are often laid off first, as men are traditionally considered to be the main “breadwinners”. Some of the implications of the global financial and economic crisis on women are:

As interdependence between the developed (North) and developing countries (South) becomes greater, the economic policies of the North will invariably impact on the South. Globalization, defined as the increasingly free flow of ideas, people, goods, services, and capital that leads to the integration of economies and societies, has become a major force for global change, but much remains to be understood about the transmission channels and potential impacts.  The developing countries commonly complain that the global system is a ‘creditor-run financial system’ and as such, maintaining the stability of the financial system is more important for the advanced countries than mitigating financial crisis in any particular country. 

(From Raj Nallari and Indira Iyer's lecture notes)

The literature on corruption is large and growing. In this and upcoming Fridays Academy comments we will attempt to capture the essence of the arguments and provide some empirical evidence on the impact of corruption on growth and poverty reduction. Corruption, which includes bribery, rent-seeking, extortion, embezzlement, is perceived as a major problem facing many countries.  Corruption has therefore been variously defined to mean ‘the misuse of public office for private gain.’   This does not mean that there is no corruption in the private sector because this is quite common in (private) financial firms.  But, corruption is more severe in the public sector than in the private sector.  One of the first known articles on corruption and its punishment is in Kautilya’s Arthasastra (dating back to 14 BC).  Corruption is found to be closely inter-related with a country’s social norms, formal and informal rules and culture as well as legal environment in a country.  No matter what, corruption connotes illegal or improper (moral) behavior and is treated as a ‘socially and culturally deviant behavior.’  From political science point of view, high level of corruption coincides with political instability and tends to reduce citizen’s trust and faith in institutions.

Measurement of Corruption

Conclusion

Urbanization is increasing at a rapid pace. Between 2005 and 2030, the world’s urban population is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 1.78 per cent, almost twice the growth rate of the world’s total population. The proportion of people living in rural areas will shrink significantly after 2015. While increasing urbanization has led to greater per capita incomes and productivity, at the same time, it has led to increasing informal sector, greater urban poverty, increasing number of slums, scarcity of housing, spiraling urban real estate prices, and inadequate infrastructure facilities. Given this phenomenon of economic concentration in one area and spatial disparities elsewhere, the key issue is “should rural labor move to jobs or should jobs move to rural areas?”  Finance and labor do not automatically move towards poorer areas. Available evidence from across the world suggests that policy makers should strive to remove impediments to capital and labor flows and reinforce agglomeration economies.  This can be done by policy makers encouraging labor movement by abolishing national minimum wages, cutting unemployment benefits and social benefits, and abolishing rent control to increase supply of housing.  Similarly, improving business climate, increasing access to finance, including microfinance and availability of credit to small enterprises, and developing infrastructure services before firms move in, are likely to affect the decisions of firms in location of their productive activities.  Strengthening the capacity of provincial and local governments in provision of essential services would be key to reduce economic concentration and spatial disparities.

The World Development Indicators is the World Bank's premier annual compilation of data about development. The 2009 WDI includes more than 800 indicators in over 90 tables organized in 6 sections: World View, People, Environment, Economy, States and Markets, and Global Links.

WDI online database available for subscribers. Selected indicators can also be accessed for free with the quick query.

A while ago we mentioned the publication of the World Bank’s newest study on poverty: “Moving Out of Poverty: Success from the Bottom Up”.

A video of a recent presentation of this publication at the World Bank is now available on-line. Participants included, among others, Deepa Narayan, Project Director of the study, and Geoffrey Lamb, Managing Director of Public Policy at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Urban Land Management and Housing

It is not easy to control migration into a city. Therefore, cities become overcrowded with growing competition for space, mobility and resources. In the past 30 years the urban population in the Asian and Pacific region has increased by 560 million people (or 260 per cent) and in the next 30 years it is expected to increase by about 1,450 million people (or 250 per cent).

Columbia University’s Earth Institute has created a site grouping four different blogs from its researchers and staff: State of the Planet, Climate and Energy, Water, and Millennium Villages.

Its Director, Jeffrey Sachs, is blogging there occasionally among many others. Worth visiting.

A while ago we wrote about the World Bank's Geo, a very useful Google map to browse WB's projects, news, statistics and public information centers by country.

The online directory AiDA (Accessible Information on Development Activities), has now put together a similar Google map with information about development activities. By clicking on a country we can see a summary of the development activities taking place there, classified according to Sector, Agency and Donor. 

Megacities and Urban Agglomeration

Dramatic decreases in costs of transport, communication and information technology should have reduced spatial disparities in economic activities and moved us to a ‘global village’.  Yet, we find that in both industrial and developing countries, economic activities are concentrated in a few centers and there are regional disparities.  For example, about 15 percent of world population live in temperate zones but produce 50 percent of world GDP.  In United States, counties that take up 2 percent of the land area produce more than half of U.S. GDP. Similarly, poverty is concentrated in a few pockets in many countries.  It was Krugman (1991) who deduced that agglomeration economies accrue at plant level and hence firms are located in a single area nearer to consumer demand in urban areas with large populations and minimal transport costs.  In other words, location of economic activity matters and a tiny (initial) difference may soon lead to a concentration of economic activity around a center and ultimately to a formation of industry cluster in the same space.  Agglomeration economies accrue at plant level, industry level or city and regional level.