"The immediate welfare costs of an economywide crisis can be high, but are there also lasting impacts? And are they greater in some geographic areas than others? Ravallion and Lokshin study Indonesia's severe financial crisis of 1998. They use 10 national surveys spanning 1993--2002, each covering 200,000 randomly sampled households, to estimate the impacts on mean consumption and the incidence of poverty across each of 260 districts. Counterfactual analyses indicate geographically diverse impacts years after the crisis. Proportionate impacts on the poverty rate were greater in initially better off and less unequal areas. In the aggregate, a large share--possibly the majority--of those Indonesians who were still poor in 2002 would not have been so without the 1998 crisis. This paper--a product of the Poverty Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to assess the social impacts of economywide crises"--Verso cover.
This work combines research and empirical evidence on the economic costs of disasters with theoretical approaches. It provides new insights on how to assess and manage the costs and impacts of disaster prevention, mitigation, recovery and adaption, and much more.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.
The unanticipated spike in international food prices in 2007-08 hit many developing countries hard. This evaluation assesses the effectiveness of the World Bank Group response in addressing the short-term impacts of the food price crisis and in enhancing the resilience of countries to future shocks.
The Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) brings together the world's finest development thinkers to present their perspectives and ideas. In recent years, a parallel, second conference has been held in Europe with the same goal of expanding the flow of ideas between thinkers, practitioners, and policymakers in the field of international development. This title presents selected papers from the seventh annual ABCDE - Europe meetings, held May 2005 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
What is the appropriate criterion to use for distributive justice? Is it efficiency, need, contribution, entitlement, equality, effort, or ability? This book maintains that far from being rival principles of distributive justice, efficiency and need satisfaction are, in fact, complementary norms in our emerging knowledge economy.
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.
This study looks at the causal relationship by which conflict triggers food crises and food insecurity (e.g.by disrupting distribution networks), which in turn perpetuate violence. It proposes intervention mechanisms, including regular cash transfers, for improving food security and sustaining peace.
