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This paper evaluates the additional spending needed to meet core targets of selected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while accounting for the associated cost to address climate risks. The SDGs under study are those related to human and physical capital development. An additional 3.8 percent of global GDP, or US$3.4 trillion, of public and private spending will be required by 2030 to achieve a strong performance in the selected SDGs while addressing associated climate risks. This includes an increase of 0.4 percent of global GDP (US$358 billion) compared to estimates that do not account for mitigation and adaptation needs within these sectors. LIDCs and SSA experience the highest climate-related cost augmentation relative to GDP, while EMEs (driven by large Asian emerging economies) bear the largest cost in absolute terms.
Despite starting as one of the poorest countries in the mid-1980s, Vietnam has achieved rapid developmental progress, reaching lower middle-income status in 2010. In line with rapid economic growth, Vietnam has achieved impressive progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during this time. This paper sheds light on some elements of Vietnam’s success story, highlighting crucial policies in education and electricity sectors. It undertakes a forward-looking costing exercise that focusses on five sectors – education, health, roads, water, and electricity infrastructure. Achieving the remaining SDGs in Vietnam will be a challenge, with total annual additional spending needs in the 5 subsectors estimated at 7 percent of GDP by 2030.
Public debt in lower-income economies (LIEs) has risen in recent years, with half of the countries covered in this report now assessed to be at high risk of or already in debt distress.
Despite the recent deterioration in the global economic environment, projections for the region involve only a modest worsening of the outlook. The October 2011 Regional Economic Outlook: Western Hemisphere cautions, however, that there are severe downside risks. A sharp slowdown in Asia, for example in response to a recession in advanced economies, could impact commodity prices, with negative effects on Latin American commodity exporters. With global monetary policy likely to remain accommodative, capital flows could exacerbate overheating and amplify vulnerabilities in emerging markets. Countries with strong real linkages to the United States face a somewhat weaker outlook and should give priority to reducing public debt. Although much of the Caribbean is recovering from a prolonged recession, the outlook remains constrained by high public debt and weak tourism flows. This issue finds that policies can play an important role in mitigating the economic impact of terms-of-trade shocks, and underscores the need to rebuild policy buffers.
With decentralization and urbanization, the debts of state and local governments and of quasi-public agencies have grown in importance. Rapid urbanization in developing countries requires large-scale infrastructure financing to help absorb influxes of rural populations. Borrowing enables state and local governments to capture the benefits of major capital investments immediately and to finance infrastructure more equitably across multiple generations of service users. With debt comes the risk of insolvency. Subnational debt crises have reoccurred in both developed and developing countries. Restructuring debt and ensuring its sustainability confront moral hazard and fiscal incentives in a mul...
Multidimensional assessment of human development is increasingly recognized as playing an important role in assessing well-being. The focus of analysis is on the indicators measuring the three dimensions of Human Development Index (HDI) — standard of living, education and health, and their relationship with public social spending for achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The study estimates the effects of public social spending on gross national income (GNI) per capita (in PPP in $), expected years of schooling and life expectancy for a sample of 68 countries. The relationship is robust to controlling for a variety of factors and the estimated magnitudes suggest a positive long-run effect of public educational spending on GNI per capita, public educational spending on expected years of schooling, and public health expenditures on life expectancy.
Beginning with an exploration of the origins and evolution of sustainable development and finance, this book continues with sections on public and private sector finance and investment for sustainable development, climate finance, and the emerging ‘blue’ economy. A concluding chapter incorporates the recommendations for sustainable finance going forward in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and escalating global environmental crisis.
A vigorous call for rethinking the field of business history. Business history needs a shake-up, Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson argue, as many businesses go global and cultural contexts become critical. Reimagining Business History prods practitioners to take new approaches to entrepreneurial intentions, company scale, corporate strategies, local infrastructure, employee well-being, use of resources, and long-term environmental consequences. During the past half century, the history of American business became an unusually active and rewarding field of scholarship, partly because of the primacy of postwar American capital, at home and abroad, and the rise of a consumer culture but als...
Emerging markets have experienced a sizeable decline in their neutral real interest rates until recently. In this paper we try to identify the main factors that contributed to it, with a focus on Brazil. We estimate an interval for Brazil’s time-varying neutral rate based on a range of structural and econometric models. We assess the implications of incorrectly estimating a time-varying neutral rate using a small structural model with a simple monetary policy instrument rule. We find that policy prescriptions are very different when facing uncertainty of neutral rate and of output gap. Our result contrasts sharply with Orphanides (2002), suggesting that the best response to neutral rate uncertainty is to ensure policy remains highly sensitive to inflation and output variations.
The enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility Law in 2013, which came into force in 2015, was a major achievement toward strengthening Paraguay’s fiscal framework. Its implementation has nonetheless been complex, with slippages occurring in the first year of its enactment. Concerns have also emerged about the current design of the nominal balance rule, which is perceived as excessively rigid. Given the high volatility of fiscal revenues, the rule translates into an unstable path of public expenditure and does not provide sufficient space for countercyclical policies. Paraguay’s tight fiscal deficit ceiling may also constrain capital expenditure plans, possibly to the detriment of overall economic development needs. The authorities have decided to replace the nominal balance rule with a structural balance rule, starting in 2019, to achieve a more stable path of public expenditure and better link it to the medium-term objectives of fiscal policy. The government is also considering modifications of the Fiscal Responsibility Law in order to enhance public investment without damaging the credibility of the rule-based framework.