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This pocket-sized reference on key environmental data for over 200 countries includes key indicators on agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, energy, emission and pollution, and water and sanitation. The volume helps establish a sound base of information to help set priorities and measure progress toward environmental sustainability goals.
For four decades the UN has attempted to foster development in the countries of the global south. The book provides a synopsis of these efforts, from the Brandt Commission Report to Boutros Boutros Ghali's Agenda for Development. Prof. Milkias presents opposing arguments in allotting responsibility for the growing gap between the North and the South and details the Millennium Development Goals and assesses their successes and failures so far. He provides suggestions for closing the gap, for removing the debt burden that is currently crushing the nations of the South, and for relieving the poverty, ignorance and disease that plague so much of humanity
Shaping Nations and Markets employs a mixed methods approach to contend that economic ideas, organization of domestic interests and their economic power, asymmetries of information, and political institutions do not sufficiently explain the formation of national interests in processes of trade liberalization. The author proposes that something is missing—identity capital—which also empowers economic sectors that share either liberalizing or protectionist interests. Identity capital is an economic sector’s contribution to the stability of a national identity narrative; it correlates with the degree to which the workforce of any sector represents the dominant conception of national ident...
"The link between food prices and poverty is as complex as it is important. Aksoy and Hoekman have put together a book that significantly advances our knowledge of this link. The book not only explores the conditions under which the poor are affected by food price movements but includes a number of empirical studies on the price-poverty link in specific developing countries. It deserves careful study by governments and NGOs." - Tim Josling, Professor Emeritus, Food Research Institute, and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University "The timing of this book could hardly have been more appropriate: while the international community still ponders on th...
"The authors test competing theories of capital structure choices using firm-level data on firm borrowings. The majority of firms in the dataset are privately owned, young, micro or small and medium enterprise (SME) firms concentrated in the service sector. In general, the financing pattern of firms is low leverage ratios and, in particular, low levels of intermediated financing and long-term financing. Average firm growth rates decreased during the five years of the sample period. Average profitability growth ratios are also negative across age and sectors and large firms have the highest negative profit growth rates. Statistical tests find a positive firm size effect on financial intermedi...
Throughout history, societies have had to decide whom to "sacrifice" and whom to help in times of disaster. This volume examines how elite groups attempt to maintain power through the use of particular economic, political, and ideological instruments and how both ruling elites and common people endeavor to create meaningful traditions while enduring hardship. The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters demonstrates how vulnerability is economically constructed, primary producers adapt their production regimes, how traders and merchants adapt their practices, and how political economic objectives play out in recovery efforts.
In December 1999, the Boards of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund approved a new approach to their relations with low-income countries. The approach was centered around the development and implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS), which are intended to be country-driven and medium- to long-term in perspective, comprehensive and results-oriented, partnership-oriented, and built on broad-based participation. Against this tall order of business, experience to date has been varied, and much debate is ongoing on whether the approach can be considered more than "old wine in new bottles." This paper-based on the results of a thorough review of the five-year implementati...
While the Azerbaijan household income and expenditure survey (HIES) data satisfy most empirical regularities expected in a typical household survey data, the inequality measures based on the data are unusually low. For example, for the latest three years for which we have data (2002 - 2004), the consumption Gini coefficient (the commonly used summary measure of inequality) is in the range of 16 - 18 percent. This is among the lowest Gini coefficients ever observed in any country, and is extremely low even with the standard of countries generally considered as most equal in the world. Azerbaijan, a transitional economy with a significant natural resource base, is unlikely to be the most equal...
In the presence of risk and uncertainty, measures such as poverty rates are inadequate to analyze the well-being of poor households. The poor are not only concerned about the current low levels of their income or consumption, but also the likelihood of experiencing stressful declines in these levels in the future. Risks to livelihood are particularly important in rural areas where there is generally high dependence on agriculture and the environment. In this study, the author analyzes the nature, extent, and causes of rural vulnerability in Serbia using panel national household data from the 2002 and 2003 Serbia Living Standard Surveys. He measures rural vulnerability as a function of nonsto...