Development Research

On 28th September 2016, the DPS unit organized a Development Policy Seminar on the topic of “The Internet of Things in transportation and its promise for Sustainable Development”. The seminar was presented by Mr. Viral Chawda (Managing Director - Data ...

The World Economic and Social Survey 2016 contributes to the debate on the implementation challenges of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In addressing the specific challenge of building resilience to climate change, the Survey focuses atten ...

On Wednesday 20 July, the Development Strategy and Policy Analysis Unit organized a side event under the auspices of the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2016. Under the theme “Climate Change Resilience: An Opportunity for Reducing ...

Prof. Nora Lustig, Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and Director of the Commitment to Equity Institute (CEQI) at Tulane University, conducted a Development Policy Seminar on Taxes, Transfers, Inequality and Poverty in the Developin ...

Newly-published Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development provides a variety of insights about the behavioral and policy changes that would need to accompany the technical transformation needed for sustainable development. The book underlin ...

The understanding of inequality has evolved from the traditional outcome-oriented view, whereby income is used as a proxy for well-being. The opportunity-oriented perspective acknowledges that circumstances of birth are essential to life outcomes and that equality of opportunity requires a fair starting point for all.

The 2015 Report of the MDG Gap Task Force was launched today in New York by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Wu Hongbo and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark. The Task Force was created in 2007 to monitor Millennium Development Goal 8, Global Partnership for Development, specifically its five core domains, official development assistance (ODA), market access (trade), debt sustainability, access to affordable essential medicines and access to new technologies. This year marks the last of the series of this monitoring process with a closing report tracking 15 years of progress. As has been reported, there have been significant positive developments pointing to an effective international partnership in the five domains, but several deficits in development cooperation have continuously highlighted the need for a rejuvenation of the global partnership for development.

In a Development Policy Seminar held in New York yesterday, Nicolas Véron, Senior Fellow at Bruegel in Brussels and Visiting Fellow from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argued that the effectiveness of post-crisis reforms in financial regulation in making global finance more stable is not so far proven. In his presentation, he showed that unintended consequences of the reforms are appearing gradually, even as their initial implementation is still unfinished. In his view, the G20 has established neither an adequate institutional infrastructure nor a consistent policy vision for a globally integrated financial system. This shortcoming justifies increasing concerns about economically harmful market fragmentation. One key aim, according to Véron, should be to make international regulatory bodies more representative of the rapidly-changing geography of global finance, not only in terms of their membership but also of their leadership and location.

Staffmembers from across DESA and other UN offices and agencies convened their first expert group meeting on 16 October in New York, to discuss the sketches of the five chapters that will comprise the 2015 World Economic and Social Survey (WESS). DPAD ...