Development impact of the Doha Round
There has been a lot of debate about the gains from the Doha Round. It was initially estimated that the developing countries would gain tremendously and would help them not only achieve development goals (especially poverty reduction) but also bridge the income gap with the developed world. However, the exact benefit of Doha Round is still debatable. Generally, analysts use models (like CGE) and simulate the likely Doha scenarios (the likely framework that would be agreed upon) to estimate the impact of policy changes in the future as against the situation in the base year. Integrating the s

Elections and economy policy
We explore the impact of elections on the quality of economic policy and governance in developing countries. We argue that not only do elections likely have a positive structural effect on economic policy, but they may also have a disruptive cyclical effect. Elections introduce frictions; they are periodic events, the timing of which may affect politicians’ incentives to reform. We also argue that achieving accountability in developing countries requires more than elections. When the quality of the electoral process is poor, elections simply do not create the structural effect we would expect. We introduce into our estimations pr

Links of Interest (11/20/2009)
China will become of the world’s largest economy in 2032 (but not in terms of income per capita!) Forecasting macroeconomic developments (Also, see top-down versus bottom-up macroeconomics) An interesting Turkish blog Gambling on a sinking nation (remember

Global economic crisis and South Asia
Dipak Dasgupta, Lead Economist for South Asia at the World Bank lists four reasons that have helped South Asia's growth rate from plunging down drastically as a result of the global economic crisis, which took South Asia’s growth down by about 3 percentage points (from 8.6% in 2007 to 5.6% in 2009). The World Bank expects GDP growth to recover to nearly 7 percent per annum on average in 2010-2011. 1. Remittances held up much stronger in South Asia than in other regions. In Nepal, the reliance on remittances is the highest, and without

Institutions, Incentives, Poverty and Inequality
Daron Acemoglu explains why and how there is persistent inequality and what can be done about it (fix incentives and governments): The question social scientists have unsuccessfully wrestled with for centuries is, Why? But the question they should have been asking is, How? Because inequality is not predetermined. Nations are not like children — they are not born rich or poor. Their governments make them that way.