Organizing Collaboration

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-42
Author(s):  
Constantine Michalopoulos

The story of Eveline Herfkens, Hilde F. Johnson, Clare Short and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, all of whom, with different titles became ministers in charge of development cooperation in the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and Germany in 1997–8, and what they did together to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality in the war against global poverty, starts with a short discussion of their background. This is followed by a discussion of the political situation and the different government arrangements that determined development policy in their countries at the time. The last part of the chapter reviews the beginnings of their collaboration which focused on ensuring that the debt relief provided to highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs) in programmes supported by the World Bank and the IMF resulted in actually lifting people out of poverty.

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michail Moatsos

Abstract In October 2015 the World Bank initiated the Atkinson Commission on Global Poverty seeking advise on (1) keeping the international poverty line (iPL) constant in real terms, and (2) what else the Bank should make available to complement the dollar-a-day estimates. The Commission’s Report bears a set of 21 key recommendations, largely covering the most important voiced worries of the research community over the Bank’s methods and estimates. In response the Bank adopted fully and unconditionally only one–out of ten–recommendations regarding point one above, and three–out of nine–recommendations to the second point. In addition the Bank accepted one of the two overarching recommendations. Among the remaining 16 sidelined or partially accepted recommendations lies arguably the most obvious and important one: the urge that the Bank publishes the error terms of its estimates. Without them these estimates are supported by little else other than the administrative authority of the Bank.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheheryar Banuri ◽  
Stefan Dercon ◽  
Varun Gauri

Abstract Although the decisions of policy professionals are often more consequential than those of individuals in their private capacity, there is a dearth of studies on the biases of policy professionals: those who prepare and implement policy on behalf of elected politicians. Experiments conducted on a novel subject pool of development policy professionals (public servants of the World Bank and the Department for International Development in the UK) show that policy professionals are indeed subject to decision-making traps, including the effects of framing outcomes as losses or gains, and, most strikingly, confirmation bias driven by ideological predisposition, despite having an explicit mission to promote evidence-informed and impartial decision making. These findings should worry policy professionals and their principals in governments and large organizations, as well as citizens themselves. A further experiment, in which policy professionals engage in discussion, shows that deliberation may be able to mitigate the effects of some of these biases.


1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lewis

Upon taking power in August 1985, General Ibrahim Babangida promised a decisive course of economic and political change for Nigeria. Alongside a phased transition to democratic rule, the new President outlined far-reaching reforms intended to alleviate major distortions in the economy, to resolve a lingering impasse with external creditors, and to reduce a mounting burden of debt. Within a year, a comprehensive structural adjustment programme (SAP) was launched, incorporating key policies advocated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and yielding significant early results in stabilising the economy and arresting decline.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kinga Magdolna Mandel ◽  
Anargul Belgibayeva

The aim of our research was to describe, compare, and analyze the development of business and educational co-operation between Kazakhstan and Hungary over the past 19 years. The research was prompted by the university-level co-operation between the two countries that star ted in 2018, which was made possible by the strategic partnership that is the topic of the present article. We started from the hypothesis that both business and educational co-operation has developed linearly and significantly during the last 19 years. Our research methodology was based on gathering and analyzing secondary macroeconomic, trade, and educational co-operation data in the period between 2011 and 2020. The data were obtained from publications, national offices (statistical, commerce, and education), and international bodies (like TempusPublic Foundation, Eurostat, International Monetary Fund [IMF], and the World Bank). In this paper, we intend to link the main political, social, and macroeconomic endowments with business and educational developments of partnership in the two countries, trying to map out prospects for co-operation. One conclusion is that, although in the political communications of the two countries we were able to identify significant governmental efforts on both sides to support and enforce economic and educational co-operation, the data indicate a decrease in the size of business investments. At the same time, however, the educational co-operation between the two parties continues to develop further.


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