UNIDO: Industrial Development Report 2009

Industrial Development Report 2009

Breaking in and moving up: New industrial challenges for the bottom billion and the middle-income countries This year’s report, entitled “Breaking in and moving up: New industrial challenges for the bottom billion and the middle-income countries” focuses on countries that have been left behind. It is about the opportunities and constraints faced by two groups of countries: the countries of the “bottom billion” trying to break into global markets for manufactured goods, and the middle-income countries that are striving to move up to more sophisticated manufacturing. The report focuses predominantly on manufacturing, but it also discusses resource extraction, which is the other major type of industrialization in developing countries. It also highlights three aspects of structural change in industry. As industrialization proceeds, what does it produce, where does it locate, and where are its outputs sold? The report seeks to improve our understanding of these processes of structural change, and sets out some economic policy responses to support breaking in and moving up in the global industrial economy. The report was launched in London on the 23 February 2009 by Kandeh K. Yumkella, UNIDO Director-General, together with the lead author of the report, Professor Paul Collier, University of Oxford.

Download the IDR:

Summary (pdf, 3.6M)

Full Report (pdf, 7.9M)

Student Handouts on Using Excel in Economics Projects

David Allen, University of the West of England, Bristol, wrote this “Using Excel in your economics assignments” guide from his 3rd year course.  It makes extensive use of screen shots and word art to take students through the stages of preparing graphs for incorporation in a report.

Purpose

1. To introduce you to the use of Excel spreadsheets to plot and analyse time series data.
2. Demonstrate how diagrams can be created in Word using the drawing features found in this software.

Sections

1. Importing data from a Word table in to an Excel file
2. Plotting time series data using Excel’s chart wizard
3. Formatting a data plot (the Excel chart)
4. Creating a duplicate data plot
5. Transferring an Excel chart to a Word document
6. From time series data create a scatter plot and fit a trend line (line of best fit)
7. Creating a diagram in Word using ‘Insert Object’

The World is Flat 3.0

Back in 2000, Tom Friedman recounts, the world began to shrink and flatten, under the influence of digital interconnectivity. Elaborating on his World is Flat thesis, Friedman describes how this new global order puts creative, entrepreneurial individuals in the driver’s seat, and poses distinct new challenges and opportunities.

The digital platform that connects Bangalore, Boston and Beijing enables users from any of these places to “plug, play, compete, connect and collaborate,” and is changing everything, says Friedman. He lists some basics to keep in mind: Whatever can be done, will be done, “and the only question left is will it be done by you or to you.” Friedman describes a Budapest limo driver who asked him to refer friends traveling to Hungary to use his service — as detailed in a website in Magyar, with English and German translations. And there’s the Sioux City- Winnebago Indian network, exporting construction tools to Kuwait. In our new era, individuals are limited only by their imaginations, so how well universities and schools enable and inspire students will determine who wins in global competition. Innovation, believes Friedman, will come from “having two or more specialties,” from those people able to connect the dots and mash them together.

But the U.S. has a real problem: We’ve “kind of lost our groove since 9/11,” and may end up ceding the global competition to China unless we get our act together, believes Friedman. We “cannot go on being as dumb as we want to be, and right now that is the motto of the U.S. Congress.” We have tons of natural attributes in this country we should be leveraging, he says. A bigger problem still is that three billion new players are streaming into this newly flat world, seeking their own version of the American dream, with cars, toasters, and microwaves. “If we don’t find a cleaner, more non-emitting way to power their dreams, we’re going to burn up, choke up, heat up and smoke up this planet so much faster than even Al Gore predicts.” Friedman scoffs at those who claim “a green revolution is going on,” calling it instead a green party, entailing no real sacrifice or pain. He says the only hope will be a “disruptive breakthrough” that brings a completely different mix of standards and taxes.” Friedman’s new mantra is, “Change your leaders, not your light bulbs.” Without new leaders to rewrite our laws and trigger the innovations, “we are cooked.”

Play Now | SPEAKER: Thomas L. Friedman Foreign Affairs Columnist, The New York Times Author

Productivity vs employment growth: a zero-sum game?

All economists know productivity matters. But they also know it isn’t easy to measure, nor to explain the often large and persistent productivity gaps between nations. A new paper by Harvard’s Ian Dew-Becker and Northwestern University’s Robert J. Gordon makes a provocative contribution to the productivity debate. Presented at a meeting of the NBER Program on Technological Progress and Productivity Measurement in Boston last week, the authors argue there is a “strong negative tradeoff between productivity and employment growth”. The abstract from their paper, The Role of Labour‐Market Changes In the Slowdown of European Productivity Growth (PDF), continues:

Originally published in the economist

What Makes for a Successful Paper and Seminar?

read it in the research page [click here]

This Blog Awarded Genius Level

If you think this blog is for you then you are a genius.

Recently we conducted blog readability test by a  particular website and  we found that our blog awarded genius level.

Just enjoy.

 

Evolutionary Economics

Evolutionary economics is a relatively new economic methodology that is modeled on biology. It stresses complex interdependencies, competition, growth, and resource constraints.

Conventional economic reasoning begins with the definition of scarcity, then assumes the existence of a “rational agent” bent solely on the attainment of one goal — the maximization of her/his welfare as defined by that agent. The scheme of valuation (“preferences” or “tastes”) used by the decision-maker is also assumed to be constant and native to the agent (“independent preferences“). Given the foregoing stipulations, the determination of the “rational choice” for any agent becomes a straightforward exercise in the differential calculus.

Evolutionary economics derives from a more modern tradition of inquiry, which does not take the characteristics of either the objects of choice or of the decision-maker as fixed. It challenges the Newtonian worldview in economics in the similar manner, as it was challenged by Darwinian evolutionary theory in biology and by studies of self-organization in physics.

Since it is a new branch of economics, websites providing resources on this topic are yet   to come. Still we have something interesting to know. heres are the links -

Basic ideas ( this sites provides basic ideas on evolutionary economics)

Evolutionary Economics Inter alia

Wikipedia

Articles

What Economists Can Learn from Evolutionary Theorists by Paul Krugman

Richard R. Nelson, Evolutionary Theories of Cultural Change: An Empirical Perspective ["the standard articulations of a Universal Darwinism put forth by biologists and philosophers tends to be too narrow, in particular too much linked to the details of evolution in biology, to fit with what is known about cultural evolution."]

A Letter to You

Our Blog access stat shows that this blog is to some extent could meet the expectations of the students of economics almost in no time. To move forward definitely we expect readers of this blog to write comments and provide information that they have. In one hand it will help others to get more information and at the same time they can have the multiplier effect. ideas, concepts information suggestions are most wellcome.

Very recently we recieved a comment that “economics is not only growth and development ……it is much broader …….”. We promise to provide jinformation  regarding new areas of economics.

Current Articles on Efficiency

Now onwards we will post some recent peer reviewed articles(downloadable) on different Topics Under the heading Research.

You are requested to post comments and links and suggestion to enrich this  blog.

 

Here is some article on efficiency

 

01. Female Land Rights, Crop Specialization, and Productivity in Paraguayan Agriculture

By: Thomas Masterson

02.Exports and Productivity in Germany

By:oachim Wagner (University of Lueneburg, Institute of Economics; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn; Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)

03.Productivity and Size of the Export Market Evidence for West and East German Plants, 2004

By: Joachim Wagner (University of Lueneburg, Institute of Economics; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn; Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)

04.Exporting, Linkages and Productivity Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment

By: Girma, Sourafel, örg, Holger, isu, Mauro