Annotation World Bank Discussion Paper No. 375.Social funds have proved to be important instruments for reaching the poor using community-based strategies. Yet, while there have been innovations in the design of these funds, the projects are much less participatory and demand-oriented than is commonly believed. This paper examines the extent to which social fund subprojects are designed to support community participation, demand orientation, and investment in local organizational capacity to achieve sustainability at the community level.
This study reviews the development effectiveness of social fund projects and considers the implications for their future support by the World Bank. It finds that the performance of such projects has improved over time in many respects. However, although they have been highly effective in delivering small-scale infrastructure, they have been less successful in achieving consistent improvements in outcomes and welfare impacts. The report recommends greater transparency and selectivity in the use of this policy instrument.
Employees are being given more and more decisions to make with regards to their pension and healthcare plans. Yet increasing research in the social sciences shows that the decisions 'real' people make are not those of the thoughtful and well-informed economic agent often portrayed in economic research, but are often based on flawed information and made without a full understanding of their financial implications. The contributors to Pension Design and Structure explore theassumptions behind commonly-held theories of retirement decision-making, and the consequences of the growing volume of research in behavioural finance and economics for the field of pension research. Contributors are drawn from a variety of disciplines, and include leading pensions experts.
The United Nations, Australia Post, and governments in the UK, Finland, Taiwan, France, Brazil, and Israel are just a few of the organizations and groups utilizing design to drive social change. Grounded by a global survey in sectors as diverse as public health, urban planning, economic development, education, humanitarian response, cultural heritage, and civil rights, Design for Social Innovation captures these stories and more through 45 richly illustrated case studies from six continents. From advocating to understanding and everything in between, these cases demonstrate how designers shape new products, services, and systems while transforming organizations and supporting individual growth. How is this work similar or different around the world? How are designers building sustainable business practices with this work? Why are organizations investing in design capabilities? What evidence do we have of impact by design? Leading practitioners and educators, brought together in seven dynamic roundtable discussions, provide context to the case studies. Design for Social Innovation is a must-have for professionals, organizations, and educators in design, philanthropy, social innovation, and entrepreneurship. This book marks the first attempt to define the contours of a global overview that showcases the cultural, economic, and organizational levers propelling design for social innovation forward today.
Within-country income inequality has risen since the early 1980s in most of the OECD, all transitional, and many developing countries. More recently, inequality has risen also in India and nations affected by the Asian crisis. Altogether, over the last twenty years, inequality worsened in 70 per cent of the 73 countries analysed in this volume, with the Gini index rising by over five points in half of them. In several cases, the Gini index follows a U-shaped pattern, with theturn-around point located between the late 1970s and early 1990s. Where the shift towards liberalization and globalization was concluded, the right arm of the U stabilized at the 'steady state level of inequality' typical of the new policy regime, as observed in the UK after 1990.Mainstream theory focusing on rises in wage differentials by skill caused by either North-South trade, migration, or technological change poorly explains the recent rise in income inequality. Likewise, while the traditional causes of income polarization-high land concentration, unequal access to education, the urban bias, the 'curse of natural resources'-still account for much of cross-country variation in income inequality, they cannot explain its recent rise.This volume suggests that the recent rise in income inequality was caused to a considerable extent by a policy-driven worsening in factorial income distribution, wage spread and spatial inequality. In this regard, the volume discusses the distributive impact of reforms in trade and financial liberalization, taxation, public expenditure, safety nets, and labour markets. The volume thus represents one of the first attempts to analyse systematically the relation between policy changes inspired byliberalization and globalization and income inequality. It suggests that capital account liberalization appears to have had-on average-the strongest disequalizing effect, followed by domestic financial liberalization, labour market deregulation, and tax reform. Trade liberalization had uncleareffects, while public expenditure reform often had positive effects.
The demand-driven rural investment fund (DRIF) is a new mechanism for decentralizing decisionmaking authority and financial resources to local governments and communities to use for investments of their choice. To counteract the local government's weak capacity to choose and implement projects well, central governments have often constrained the choices of communities by limiting the types of projects eligible for financing and requiring specific procedures for procurement and disbursement. This study explores the extent to which well-designed DRIF rules and incentive structures can substitute for central control. It looks at the different and often conflicting motivations of donors, central governments, and communities and explores how rules can be devised to allow actors to achieve their objectives.
The establishment of good governance is a major challenge for the developing world, along with the need to sustain the progress resulting from developmental efforts. Although there are numerous studies on the development and governance of emerging nations, few volumes make a serious effort to bring together these two critical concepts. International Development Governance combines the two concepts - development and governance - by examining the issues and problems faced by nations in their attempts to establish sustainable governance. This textbook also initiates discussions on the concept of development governance in an international context. The book fills the gap in existing literature by drawing upon the experience and expertise of scholars from a broad spectrum of knowledge. Their views explain the issues and problems with reference to a number of tools that could establish "development governance" and sustain it. The text offers in-depth examinations of developmental sectors, resulting in a textbook that will inspire future public officials, policy makers, and consultants to contribute to the betterment of life for citizens of developing countries.
This book is among the first to take the poverty reduction paradigm as its central focus. Offering a comprehensive introduction, overview and critique, it traces the emergence of the framework and illustrates its consequences with global case studies.
