Development Policy Seminar Series "Market access, Transparency and Fairness in Global Trade" presented by Willem van der Geest, International Trade Centre (ITC), Thursday, 27 January 2011, 3:00 to 4:30 p.m., 19th floor Conference Room in the DC2 building (DC2-1949)

(contact: Manuel Montes, 73087)

Final conferences of Development Account Project “Realizing the Millennium Development Goals through Socially Inclusive Macroeconomic Policies” on 9 and 11 November 2010, in Johannesburg, South Africa and Kampala, Uganda, respectively. Main goals: (i) presentation of the main findings of the studies by the South African and Ugandan teams; (ii) discussion among experts and policymakers about MDG-related policy implications, taking into consideration the feasibility of achieving the MDGs under different financing scenarios, public spending requirements and macroeconomic trade-offs of scaling up public spending; (iii) assessment of overall performance and institutionalization as well as sustainability of the newly acquired methodologies for policymaking purposes and further capacity development activities.

World Economic Situation and Prospects: Monthly Briefing, No. 27 (18 January)

This Monthly Briefing covers the highlights of World Economic Situation and Prospects 2011 launched on 18 January. It emphasizes in particular that a further slowdown in global economic growth is expected. It also underlines that developing countries continue to lead the recovery. Finally, it stresses that there are major downside risks for the outlook, including too early moves to fiscal austerity, further exchange rate volatility and a renewed widening of the global imbalances.

Economic Insecurity and Development, Rob Vos and Richard Kozul-Wright, eds. New York: United Nations, 2010

A growing sense of increased economic insecurity has emerged worldwide. Economic progress in recent decades has been accompanied by highly volatile markets, rising inequality, greater job insecurity and weakening or non-existent social protection. New global threats, such as climate change, increasingly destructive natural disasters and inadequately regulated financial markets have also compounded economic insecurity. Until recently, these heightened economic risks and compounded threats have been met with the response that the forces behind them are beyond our collective political control. This book argues that such complacency is the wrong response, and instead calls for more proactive and integrated policy responses, at the national and international levels, to help communities and countries better manage economic risks, cope with shocks and secure more stable livelihoods.

Available form: United Nations publications,   Kindle edition,   Nook edition

Public Policies for Human Development: Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Latin America.

This book looks into which policy strategies and financing options would be advisable for policymakers in the Latin American and Caribbean region in pursuance of a selected set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). To answer these questions, it draws on and presents the results of a number of country studies in the region that were undertaken jointly by UNDP, UN-DESA/DPAD and the World Bank, among others. All country studies are based on an economy-wide approach, capturing the linkages between increased resource allocations to social services, the composition of the labour supply, changes in relative prices, and financing constraints in different parts of the economy. This provides great value added over more sector-based needs assessments for achieving the MDGs, as the analysis shows that the macroeconomic repercussions strongly influence the cost estimates of the resources needed to achieve the goals in education, health and sanitation.

The book was published by Palgrave Macmillan, in association with UNDP, UN-DESA and the World Bank.

Choques Externos y Políticas de Protección Social en Costa Rica

When a developing country finds itself confronted with an external economic shock such as the world food price crisis of 2007-2008 or the more recent global financial and economic crisis, the appropriate economic and social policies can make all the difference in protecting past development gains and the overall wellbeing of the population. Hence, policymakers must carefully assess the expected costs and benefits of different policy options at their disposal. Within the framework of the regional capacity building project "Implications of Macroeconomic Policy, External Shocks and Social Protection Systems for Poverty, Inequality, and Social Vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean", UN-ECLAC and UN-DESA/DPAD have teamed up to develop an economy-wide analytical approach that supports this assessment process by taking into account macroeconomic trade-offs and intersectoral linkages. The present study describes the implementation of this methodology for Costa Rica, including a detailed description of the analytical methodology, and highlighting a set of social protection policies that are found appropriate to help mitigate the impact of external shocks.

The publication of this book was sponsored by the Ministry of Planning, Programa Estado de la Nación and UNDP Costa Rica. A free hard copy is available upon request (dpad@un.org).