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50482. Media and Democracy: A Report of the 2008 Aspen Institute Forum on Communications and Society
- Author:
- Richard P. Adler
- Publication Date:
- 03-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- What information do citizens need to participate fully in the democratic life of their communities? How did they get this information in the past and how will they get it in the future?
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Democratization, and Mass Media
50483. Turkey and the Transformation of NATO
- Author:
- Tarik Oguzlu
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
- Abstract:
- Recent years have made it clear that NATO is going through a transformation process; Turkey will be one of the allies most affected by this process. Both the future of NATO and Turkey's perception of NATO membership will be at stake unless the allies can reach consensus on the core strategic issues of the transformation agenda. Analysts urgently need to come up with convincing answers to the following questions: In which ways has NATO's transformation been going through? Why does Turkey feel uneasy with some aspects of the process? What steps should Turkey take in order to ensure that the transformation of the Alliance is viewed positively at home?
- Topic:
- NATO, International Cooperation, and International Organization
- Political Geography:
- Central Asia and Turkey
50484. What Is Poverty Reduction?
- Author:
- Owen Barder
- Publication Date:
- 04-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- There is a healthy debate about how to achieve poverty reduction in developing countries, but not enough discussion of what we mean by “poverty reduction.” “Poverty reduction” is often used as a short-hand for promoting economic growth that will permanently lift as many people as possible over a poverty line. But there are many different objectives that are consistent with “poverty reduction,” and we have to make choices between them. There are trade-offs between tackling current and future poverty, between helping as many poor people as possible and focusing on those in chronic poverty, and between measures that tackle the causes of poverty and those which deal with the symptoms. Because donors focus on just one dimension of poverty reduction (growth) they marginalise other legitimate objectives such as reducing chronic poverty or providing social services in countries that cannot otherwise afford them.
- Topic:
- Development, Environment, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, Third World, and Foreign Aid
50485. Blunt Instruments: On Establishing the Causes of Economic Growth
- Author:
- Michael Clemens and Samuel Bazzi
- Publication Date:
- 05-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Despite intense concern that many instrumental variables used in growth regressions may be weak, invalid, or both, top journals continue to publish studies of economic growth based on problematic instruments. Doing so risks pushing the entire literature closer to irrelevance. We illustrate hidden problems with identification in recent prominently published and widely cited growth studies using their original data. We urge researchers to take three steps to overcome the shortcomings: grounding research in somewhat more generalized theoretical models, deploying the latest methods to test sensitivity to violations of the exclusion restriction, and opening the “black box” of the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with supportive evidence of instrument strength.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Political Economy
50486. Rice Price Formation in the Short Run and the Long Run
- Author:
- C. Peter Timmer
- Publication Date:
- 05-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- This paper analyzes price formation on the world's rice market using simple supply and demand models as a start, but moving to “supply of storage” models—a staple of commodity-market analysis for more than half a century—to explain hoarding behavior and its subsequent impact on prices. The supply of storage model, however, does not account adequately for the influence that “outside” speculators have on prices. This paper quantifies the impact of financial factors and actors on commodity-price formation using very short-run prices and Granger causality analysis for a wide range of financial and commodity markets, including rice. The results are highly preliminary but are also very provocative. Speculative money seems to surge in and out of commodity markets, strongly linking financial variables with commodity prices during some time periods, but these periods are often short and the relationships disappear for long periods of time. Finally, the paper addresses the long-run (since 1900) relationships among the prices of the three basic cereal staples, rice, wheat and corn (maize), which have declined more than 1 percent per year over the past century. The decline accelerated after the mid-1980s; only the recent run-up in cereal prices in 2007–08 returned them to the long-run downward trend. Despite these common features and important cross-commodity linkages, however, price formation for rice has several unique dimensions worthy of further study.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Markets, Food, and Financial Crisis
50487. The Microeconomic Determinants of Emigration and Return Migration and Return Migration of the Best and Brightest: Evidence from the Pacific
- Author:
- John Gibson and David McKenzie
- Publication Date:
- 05-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- A unique survey which tracks worldwide the best and brightest academic performers from three Pacific countries is used to assess the extent of emigration and return migration among the very highly skilled, and to analyze, at the microeconomic level, the determinants of these migration choices. Although we estimate that the income gains from migration are very large, not everyone migrates and many return. Within this group of highly skilled individuals the emigration decision is found to be most strongly associated with preference variables such as risk aversion, patience, and choice of subjects in secondary school, and not strongly linked to either liquidity constraints or to the gain in income to be had from migrating. Likewise, the decision to return is strongly linked to family and lifestyle reasons, rather than to the income opportunities in different countries. Overall the data show a relatively limited role for income maximization in distinguishing migration propensities among the very highly skilled, and a need to pay more attention to other components of the utility maximization decision.
- Topic:
- Economics, Migration, Political Economy, and Immigration
- Political Geography:
- Australia/Pacific
50488. The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence
- Author:
- David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch
- Publication Date:
- 06-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The most-noted studies on the impact of microcredit on households are based on a survey fielded in Bangladesh in the 1990s. Contradictions among them have produced lasting controversy and confusion. Pitt and Khandker (PK, 1998) apply a quasi-experimental design to 1991–92 data; they conclude that microcredit raises household consumption, especially when lent to women. Khandker (2005) applies panel methods using a 1999 resurvey; he concurs and extrapolates to conclude that microcredit helps the extremely poor even more than the moderately poor. But using simpler estimators than PK, Morduch (1999) finds no impact on the level of consumption in the 1991–92 data, even as he questions PK's identifying assumptions. He does find evidence that microcredit reduces consumption volatility. Partly because of the sophistication of PK's Maximum Likelihood estimator, the conflicting results were never directly confronted and reconciled. We end the impasse. A replication exercise shows that all these studies' evidence for impact is weak. As for PK's headline results, we obtain opposite signs. But we do not conclude that lending to women does harm. Rather, all three studies appear to fail in expunging endogeneity. We conclude that for non-experimental methods to retain a place in the program evaluator's portfolio, the quality of the claimed natural experiments must be high and demonstrated.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
- Political Geography:
- Bangladesh, South Asia, and Asia
50489. U.S.-European Nonproliferation Perspectives: A Transatlantic Conversation
- Author:
- Camille Grand, Tomas Valasek, Marcin Zaborowski, Stefan Kornelius, and Mark Smith
- Publication Date:
- 04-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- The arrival of the Obama administration has brought significant hope to a transatlantic partnership that has been both ailing and adrift for the better part of the last two decades. Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the two sides of the Atlantic have struggled to identify a new common project and create the tools and institutions needed to address common challenges. To their credit, they have transformed their militaries, integrated new members into Western institutions such as the European Union and NATO, deepened economic ties, developed new partnerships, and acquired new capabilities. But they have also had a number of ugly and public disputes over the nature and severity of the threats they face as well as the means necessary to combat such threats.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and Bilateral Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Berlin
50490. U.S. National Security and Global Health: An Analysis of Global Health Engagement by the U.S. Department of Defense
- Author:
- Eugene V. Bonventre, Kathleen H. Hicks, and Stacy M. Okutani
- Publication Date:
- 04-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- Despite a broadening consensus that global health care efforts have an impact on national and global security, the U.S. national security community's efforts to address global health are weak and uncoordinated. The 2006 National Security Strategy states that “development reinforces diplomacy and defense, reducing long-term threats to our national security by helping to build stable, prosperous, and peaceful societies.” While the U.S. government struggles to find the right balance among the “three Ds” of defense, diplomacy, and development, the U.S. military has increased its involvement in global health where it perceives the diplomacy and development to be under resourced—or to achieve its own specific objectives. As efforts to renew the capabilities of civilian agencies proceed, it is an appropriate time to step back and consider the role that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) currently plays in glob al health, the impact of its health activities on national and regional security, and the role it could play to support a newly balanced U.S. foreign policy.
- Topic:
- Security and Health
- Political Geography:
- United States