You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This paper examines trends in indicators of gender equality and women’s development, using evidence derived from individual indicators and gender equality indices. We extend both the United Nations Development Program’s Gender Development Index and Gender Inequality Index to examine time trends. In recent decades, the world has moved closer to gender equality and narrowed gaps in education, health, and economic and political opportunity; however, substantial differences remain, especially in South Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. The results suggest countries can make meaningful improvements in gender equality, even while significant income differences between countries remain.
Produced since 2012, the IMF’s annual External Sector Report analyzes global external developments and provides multilaterally consistent assessments of external positions, including current accounts, real exchange rates, external balance sheets, capital flows, and international reserves, of the world’s largest economies, representing over 90 percent of global GDP. Chapter 1 discusses the evolution of global external positions in 2019, external developments during the COVID-19 crisis, and policy priorities for responding to the crisis and for reducing excess imbalances over the medium term. Chapter 2 analyzes the relationship between the structure of external assets and liabilities—the...
How can Low-Income Countries (LICs) enhance tax revenue collection to finance their vast development needs? We address this question by analyzing seven tax reform experiences in LICs (Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Maldives, Mauritania, Rwanda, Senegal, and Uganda). Three lessons stand out, although reforms must be tailored to individual circumstances: (i) Tax reforms require first and foremost political commitment and buy-in from key stakeholders; (ii) Countries that pursue both revenue administration and tax policy reforms tend to see much larger and persistent gains; and (iii) A successful strategy often starts with fiscal reform measures with immediate effect to build momentum. These can include: simplifying the tax system; curbing exemptions; reforming indirect taxes on goods and services (e.g., excises); and better managing compliance risks through strengthening taxpayer segmentation (often beginning with strengthening the Large Taxpayers Office). A comprehensive reform strategy (e.g., a medium-term revenue strategy) can help to properly sequence reform measures and facilitate their implementation.
Since at least the Great Financial Crisis, authorities around the world have increasingly relied on macroprudential policy to help secure financial stability and complement monetary policy as an integral element of a broader macro-financial stability framework. In today's interconnected global financial system, policy actions taken by the major advanced economies can have spillovers on the rest of the world through their impact on capital flows and exchange rates, potentially generating vulnerabilities across borders. Conversely, in emerging market economies, macroprudential policy as well as foreign exchange intervention and/or capital flow management policy can help mitigate the correspond...
This volume contains seven chapters that consider how fiscal policies can address women’s and girls’ disadvantages in education, health, employment, and financial well-being. Researchers from a joint collaboration between the International Monetary Fund and the UK’s Department for International Development presented papers at a 2016 international conference on gender budgeting at the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington, DC, and detail the findings of their work here, which draws on published materials, a questionnaire sent to ministries of finance to all International Monetary Fund member countries, and interviews with country officials and international organizations that offer technical assistance to countries seeking to implement gender budgeting. They describe key gender budgeting efforts planning, allocating, and monitoring government expenditures and taxes to address gender inequality in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Canada, the Middle East and Central Asia, and the Pacific Islands and Caribbean.
While global uncertainty—measured by the VIX—has proven to be a robust global “push” factor of international capital flows, there has been no systematic study assessing the role of country-specific uncertainty as a key (pull and push) factor of international capital flows. This paper tries to fill this gap in the literature by examining the effects of country-specific uncertainty shocks on cross-border banking flows using the confidential Bank for International Settlements Locational Banking Statistics data. The dyadic structure of this data allows to disentangle supply and demand factors and to better identify the effect of uncertainty shocks on cross-border banking flows. The results of this analysis suggest that: (i) uncertainty is both a push and pull factor that robustly predicts a decrease in both outflows (retrenchment) and inflows (stops); (ii) global banks rebalance their lending towards safer foreign borrowers from local borrowers when facing higher uncertainty; (iii) this rebalancing occurs only towards advanced economies (flight to quality), but not emerging market economies.
In the twenty-first century, gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) has emerged as a development tool that explores if and how gender equality goals and targets are being effectively supported through government funding. Gender-Responsive Budgeting in Practice: Lessons from Nigeria and Selected Developing Countries argues that, although justified by the high costs of gender inequality to economic growth and development, the use of GRB as a tool to achieve global and regional gender equality goals has seen little progress in the twenty-first century, especially in developing countries. Through analyses of government budgets and the budgeting process, and gender equality outcomes in Nigeria and the selected countries from 2000 to 2020, the contributors show that GRB has failed to gain traction or thrive in developing countries. Using these analyses, the contributors identify critical success factors that are missing in policy-making and planning in the developing world and must be integrated in order to further facilitate inclusive growth and sustainable development.
This book takes a broad look at conceptual and practical applications of gender budgeting in Europe. It comprises three linked sections that work through conceptual definitions of gender budget analysis. These sections explore how it can be framed and constructed as a gender equality policy; investigate case studies across Europe; and examine challenges for implementation. The first book of its kind, Gender Budgeting in Europe explores conceptual and methodological variations evidence in practice in Europe and the challenges of adoption and implementation in different political and institutional contexts. It brings together historical and current conceptual developments and tensions; approaches, methodologies, and tools in practice across Europe; activism, actors and agency and the engagement of formal institutions at all levels of government with feminist policy changes and feminist analysis and activists. This text is fascinating reading for students, scholars, policy makers and activists.
This Selected Issues paper analyzes investment strategy to foster structural transformation in Rwanda. Over the past 15 years, Rwanda has transformed its economy by moving workers out of agriculture into mostly services and some industry. This has been accomplished through strong public investment flows and efficient public investment management. Going forward, the challenge is whether the private sector can complement the infrastructure assets put in place by the public sector and maintain economic momentum. It will also require continued effort by the government in raising education standards, better matching qualifications offered to students to those most in demand by employers, and lowering electricity and transportation costs.
Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. In making these things cheap, modern commerce has transformed, governed, and devastated Earth. In A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore present a new approach to analyzing today's planetary emergencies. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. At a time of crisis in all seven cheap things, innovative and systemic thinking is urgently required. This book proposes a radical new way of understanding-and reclaiming-the planet in the turbulent twenty-first century.