Weekend Reading: Unemployment Edition
Can development workers win wars?
Is transport infrastructure the most important aspect of urban evolution?
The Treasury's courtship of the blogosphere.
web sites
Rethinking the brain drain
An article in Foreign Policy last month asks us to rethink the brain drain. Authors Michael Clemens and David McKenzie (the latter an employee of the World Bank) argue that the movement of skilled labor is a boon to both developed and developing countries. They decry the term "brain drain" as a serious mischaracterization of the phenomenon.
The theory of industrial policy meets reality
The idea of industrial policy has been seeing a bit of a resurgence since the financial crisis. It's good to be reminded of the reality of what these policies end up looking like in practice.
Does GATS require network neutrality?
A new paper argues that permanent blocks by WTO members on internet services like search engines, photo sharing, etc. run afoul of the General Agreement on Trade in Services. The International Economic Law and Policy blog has the details.
Microfinance under the microscope
Last year I speculated about the potential impact of the financial crisis on the environment for microfinance.
Improving Credit in Armenia
The 2006 and 2007 Doing Business reports both found that Armenia has been reforming in the area of credit. Armenian lenders can now rely on a credit registry when deciding on loan applications. But have these reforms really had an impact?
Bringing Finance to Pakistan's Poor
Yesterday I attended the World Bank's book launch of Bringing Finance to Pakistan's Poor: Access to Finance for Small Enterprises and the Underserved. The authors, Tatiana Nenova and Ceclie Thioro Niang, interviewed 10,000 households from across Pakistan's geographic and socio-economic landscape, including both men and women.
Good News in Migration
A few months ago, I attended the World Bank's conference on Diaspora for Development, hosted by Dilip Ratha, lead economist at the World Bank. The general feeling at that time was that remittance flows would contract significantly this year, but, paradoxically, would become a more important source of external financing in many countries, as foreign direct investment had dropped by up to 50 percent.
1929 vs 2008
Free Exchange points to an excellent graph from Paul Krugman illustrating how the policy responses and automatic stabilizers during the current crisis have been much more successful than those during the Great Depression. The chart speaks for itself: