The Information Economy Report 2008 - Science and technology for development: the new paradigm of ICT, analyses the current and potential contribution of information technology to knowledge creation and diffusion. It explores how ICTs help generate innovations that improve the livelihoods of the poor and support enterprise competitiveness. The report examines how ICTs affect productivity and growth and reflects on the need for a development-oriented approach to intellectual property rights in order to enable effective access to technology. ICT has also given rise to new models for sharing knowledge and collective production.
The IER 2012 highlights the growing importance of the software industry for developing countries, building on earlier UNCTAD work on the promotion of the ICT sector in general and the software industry in particular. The report contains new data and features the new UNCTAD National Software System Index. It highlights the role of free and open source software for the development of a local software industry, reviews selected country case studies and presents policy options
The world's demand for food is expected to double within the next 50 years, while the natural resources that sustain agriculture will become increasingly scarce, degraded, and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In many poor countries, agriculture accounts for at least 40 percent of GDP and 80 percent of employment. At the same time, about 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. 'World Development Report 2008' seeks to assess where, when, and how agriculture can be an effective instrument for economic development, especially development that favors the poor. It examines several broad questions: How has agriculture changed in developing countries in the past 20 years? What are the important new challenges and opportunities for agriculture? Which new sources of agricultural growth can be captured cost effectively in particular in poor countries with large agricultural sectors as in Africa? How can agricultural growth be made more effective for poverty reduction? How can governments facilitate the transition of large populations out of agriculture, without simply transferring the burden of rural poverty to urban areas? How can the natural resource endowment for agriculture be protected? How can agriculture's negative environmental effects be contained? This year's report marks the 30th year the World Bank has been publishing the 'World Development Report'.
The Information Economy Report 2008 - Science and technology for development: the new paradigm of ICT, analyses the current and potential contribution of information technology to knowledge creation and diffusion. It explores how ICTs help generate innovations that improve the livelihoods of the poor and support enterprise competitiveness. The report examines how ICTs affect productivity and growth and reflects on the need for a development-oriented approach to intellectual property rights in order to enable effective access to technology. ICT has also given rise to new models for sharing knowledge and collective production.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is a founding member of the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development, which is an international, multi-stakeholder initiative to improve the availability and quality of ICT data and indicators. One of its key achievements is the development of a core list of ICT indicators for the production of internationally comparable statistics. This list was first endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission at its 38th session in March 2007 and has since been updated regularly. The Commission encouraged countries to use that list in their data collection programmes; a first version of the Manual for the Production of Statistics on the Information Economy was published at the end of 2007. An updated version was published in 2009. The current edition, entitled Manual for the Production of Statistics on the Digital Economy, was prepared to reflect the many changes that have taken place in the past decade in terms of access and use of ICTs. Compared to earlier versions, it expands the coverage of the measurement of e-commerce, trade in ICT services and trade in ICT-enabled (or digitally delivered) services. It contains more model questionnaires and reflects the most recent revisions of the Partnership's list of core ICT indicators. The Manual is intended to guide statisticians from developing countries through all the steps involved in the production and dissemination of statistics related to e-commerce and the digital economy.
The Digital Economy Report 2019 on "Value creation and capture: Implications for developing countries" takes stock of recent trends in the global digital landscape and discusses the development and policy implications of data and digital platforms. A key feature of the evolving digital economy is the increasing role of digital data as an economic resource, together with digital platforms as new influential actors, with capacity to collect, process, analyze and monetize data. The report considers policy options for countries to help ensure that they capture a fair part of the value created in the digital economy for inclusive development. Key issues include the market impact of emerging technologies and digital platforms, the impact on smaller businesses in developing countries and the implications for infrastructure, entrepreneurship, skills, competition, data flows, data protection, taxation and other relevant policies.
Today, information and the technologies that store and disseminate it are producing deep-rooted and widespread changes in society - changes of the same magnitude as those that occurred during the Industrial Revolution. The purpose of this book is to give a complete picture of the information society by examining in detail the social, economic, political, and cultural roles of information and information technology. This book is effectively a second edition of the author's classic The Information Society. In it, the author illustrates the major trends in and inter-relationships between information, information and communication technologies, and the global economy and society. In tracing the direction of information-based change he reveals the implications for ordinary citizens, for the quality of everyday life, for economic and social activity, and examines the prospects of nations and trading blocs. This book provides a new way of looking at society, one that is essential for understanding social and economic structures and processes in the information age.
Rising densities of human settlements, migration and transport to reduce distances to market, and specialization and trade facilitated by fewer international divisions are central to economic development. The transformations along these three dimensions density, distance, and division are most noticeable in North America, Western Europe, and Japan, but countries in Asia and Eastern Europe are changing in ways similar in scope and speed. 'World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography' concludes that these spatial transformations are essential, and should be encouraged. The conclusion is not without controversy. Slum-dwellers now number a billion, but the rush to cities continues. Globalization is believed to benefit many, but not the billion people living in lagging areas of developing nations. High poverty and mortality persist among the world's 'bottom billion', while others grow wealthier and live longer lives. Concern for these three billion often comes with the prescription that growth must be made spatially balanced. The WDR has a different message: economic growth is seldom balanced, and efforts to spread it out prematurely will jeopardize progress. The Report: documents how production becomes more concentrated spatially as economies grow. proposes economic integration as the principle for promoting successful spatial transformations. revisits the debates on urbanization, territorial development, and regional integration and shows how today's developers can reshape economic geography.
