The Forgotten Rationale for Policy Reform PDF Download

Author: Jonathan Isham
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Developing countries
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Author: Jonathan Isham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
Using economic rates of return from more than 1,200 public and private sector projects implemented in 61 developing countries, the authors analyze determinants of investment productivity. Results from Tobit estimation demonstrate that the degree of countrywide policy distortions - macroeconomic, exchange rate, trade and pricing - critically affects the productivity of investments. Countries with undistorted policies are likely to be unproductive investments. In countries with distorted policies, investments are likely to be unproductive. And within a country, investments become more productive when economic policymaking improves. The productivity of projects in the tradable sectors are also affected (in a nonlinear fashion) by the size of a country's public investment program. The authors discuss possible selection biases in this data set, present tests of robustness, and highlight policy implications. In particular, donor financing for improvements in the policy climate is likely to pay off. A powerful rationale for supporting structual reform is that it raises the productivity of both public and private investments.

Author: Isham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Jonathan Isham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages :

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November 1995 Using economic rates of return from more than 1,200 public and private sector projects implemented in 61 developing countries, the authors analyze determinants of investment productivity. Results from Tobit estimation demonstrate that the degree of countrywide policy distortions - macroeconomic, exchange rate, trade and pricing - critically affects the productivity of investments. Countries with undistorted policies are likely to be unproductive investments. In countries with distorted policies, investments are likely to be unproductive. And within a country, investments become more productive when economic policymaking improves. The productivity of projects in the tradable sectors are also affected (in a nonlinear fashion) by the size of a country's public investment program. The authors discuss possible selection biases in this data set, present tests of robustness, and highlight policy implications. In particular, donor financing for improvements in the policy climate is likely to pay off. A powerful rationale for supporting structual reform is that it raises the productivity of both public and private investments.

Author: Isabel Sawhill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300241062
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

Author: Richard Rothstein
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631492861
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review). Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.

Author: Tony Killick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134662459
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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This volume looks at the effectiveness of conditionality in structural adjustment programmes. Tony Killick charts the emergence of conditionality, and challenges the widely held assumption that it is a co-operative process, arguing that in fact it tends to be coercive and detrimental to development objectives. Through detailed case studies of twenty one recipient countries, he explores the key issues of: * ownership * role of agencies * government objectives and the effects of policy. The conclusion is that conditionality has been counterproductive to price stability, economic growth and investment.

Author: Mr.Jaromir Benes
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1475505523
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 71

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Book Description
At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.

Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781590318737
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Author: Paul Erickson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022604677X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences—psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others—and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people—Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others—and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a “Cold War rationality.” Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality—optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical—in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy. The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship.