PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

Now hanging in IFC

I was walking through the lobby of IFC today, and there was something pretty unusual hanging—a bunch of oversized, transparent garbage bags. I took a snapshot with my phone (apologies for the modest quality of the photo). From a distance, I couldn't tell what was inside, but when I got up close I saw they were filled with tons of plastic bottles—all used by IFC staff. The sign below the bags reports that IFC staff consume some 80,600 plastic bottles every year.

So why put them on such dramatic display? The IFC Footprint campaign is putting on an event entitled "What a Waste" to promote environmental awareness in the organization. They'll also be screening the film Addicted to Plastic. (For World Bank Group staff, here is a full schedule of events.) At the behest of one of my (greener) colleagues, I bought an L.L. Bean bottle a couple of months ago at a cost of $21.95. I'm pretty sure I have recouped the purchase price by this point.

Weekend Links

A new look at the tragedy of the commons.

The Halo Effect, explained.

Mongolia is in the news this week.

A societal preference for boys has become an unlikely source of power for Indian women.

Consumption versus Income Inequality.

Why it's time to start studying Portuguese

First, there was speculation in the press that Brazil's President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, might be the next President of the World Bank. Then Moody's upgraded Brazil's debt to investment grade, citing its resilience in the crisis and bright future growth prospects. And just last week the International Olympic Committee announced that the 2016 Olympic Games would be held in Rio de Janeiro, with Lula simply ebullient:

We are not a second-rate country, we are a first-rate country and this is what this victory means.

To top off my case that it's time to start studying Portuguese, the Brazilian city of Florianópolis (pictured) will be hosting one of the coolest conferences later this month. Between October 26-30 infoDev will be running the third Global Forum on Innovation & Entrepreneurship. On-line registration is open through the 18th. Lula explained after last week's announcement that Brazil would "sleep less, think more, and work much harder." The Global Forum would probably be a good place to start.

Update: Over at the World Bank's Growth and Crisis blog, Ihssane Loudiyi reports on a recently released annual socioeconomic survey conducted by the Brazilian government. The long and short of it: Brazil continues to improve along many measures of social and economic progress. (Although we must add a caveat that the results are for 2008, so some of the impact of the crisis may not yet be apparent.) Here is more info about the survey.  

(Photo Credit: Armando Vernaglia)    

Access to finance at the Annual Meetings

Amidst the flurry of activity at the joint World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings, one initiative was announced that probably won't grab as much attention as the IMF's most recent World Economic Outlook or Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn's agile dodging of a flying shoe. But for the world's poor, the IMF's launch of a new Access to Finance project will probably be much more important. From the press release:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) today launched the “Access to Finance Project,” which is aimed at collecting annual geographic and demographic data on access to basic consumer financial services worldwide. The aim of the project is development of high-quality, cross-country data for policy makers and researchers...

...Specifically, data will be collected on the geographical and demographical outreach of financial services. The outreach of financial services is proxied by bank branch network, availability of automated teller machines, and by four key financial instruments: deposits, loans, debt securities issued, and insurance.

Tweets of the Day: Istanbul Edition

Here are the latest updates from the World Bank/IMF meetings from our Tweeter-in-Chief, Neil Gregory:

nfgregory: In Istanbul for World Bank annual meetings - focus this year on post-crisis economic recovery. First impressions - mood mostly bullish.

nfgregory: importance of developing local capital markets, local funding. Can still benefit from skills of international banks, but with local funding

nfgregory: Protectionism, restrictions on capital flows mean that economies like Egypt need to rely more on domestic demand, domestic capital markets

nfgregory: Entrepreneurship key to new job creation. Governments supporting through deregulation, venture capital, local equity market development.

You can follow all of Neil's Tweets here, or from our World Bank PSD Twitter page.

More Tweets after the jump...

Your man on the inside (of the Annual Meetings)

The joint World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings are getting started in Istanbul, and this year promises an especially busy schedule. How will you keep up with it all? You can follow our man on the inside: Neil Gregory, Senior Adviser to the VP of Financial and Private Sector Development. He'll be Tweeting from the Program of Seminars that precede the start of the Annual Meetings proper next Tuesday. You can follow Neil @nfgregory. We'll also be Re-Tweeting Neil's commentary @worldbankpsd.

Mobile Banking: The banks are asleep at the wheel

Last week saw an all-day event at the World Bank on Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation. The sessions covered the use of mobile phones in everything from governance to education. I attended a morning session on mobile innovations in financial services in which speakers covered issues on payments for ex-combatants in the DRC, Government-to-Person (G2P) payments, and pre-paid value card solutions.

However, the most interesting remark in this session came not from one of the speakers but the invited commentary. Why is it that we see network-centric players dominating this field in some cases (e.g. M-Pesa) or independent firms (e.g., Celpay, the provider of payment solutions for ex-combatants in DRC)? Andi Dervishi, the Global Practice Lead for Investments in Payments at IFC, put it very simply: "The banks are asleep at the wheel."

One needle in a haystack, or many?

As I suspected, the event earlier this week on Industrial Policy and the Role of the State in Promoting Growth attracted a standing-room only crowd. Although the event was billed as a "panel discussion", the structure ended up being much more of a friendly debate, with Justin Lin and Ann Harrison sitting on one side of the table and Bill Easterly on the other. The topic, as I discussed before, was the question of whether there is a role for industrial policy in the developing world.

Easterly, Harrison, and Lin each had a chance to give a 15 minute presentation, which was then followed by a round of questions combined with closing arguments. Although the whole thing was entertaining, I didn't get the feeling that the proceedings changed the minds of anyone who was already leaning in one direction or another.

Easterly gave a presentation that covered many of the points you would be familiar with if you've read any of his previous work on development. He hews closely to the Socratic motto: "I know that I do not know." Experts should be well aware of the limits of their own knowledge, and instead trust in the wisdom of a decentralized search process whereby entrepreneurs discover new, more efficient ways of doing things. Simply put, industrial policy=bad idea.

New Structuralist Economics: Industrial policy 2.0?

A presentation this afternoon sponsored by the Development Research Group of the World Bank promises to generate some heat (and hopefully some light as well). Justin Lin, Chief Economist of the World Bank, will be on a panel with Bill Easterly, professor at New York University and author of The White Man's Burden, to discuss Industrial Policy and the Role of the State in Promoting Growth. Although Easterly has been up to a lot of antics on his blog lately (e.g. Supermodel vows to stay naked till USAID funds reach starving children), I expect this discussion will be on the serious side of things.

The presentation will focus on three papers, two of which are authored by Lin. A few weeks ago I heard Lin give a précis of one of these papers, which lays out a New Structuralist approach to development economics. To summarize the paper as briefly as possible: the state has a legitimate role in engaging in industrial policy, but this time around it needs to work with a country's comparative advantage rather than against it.

The view from Mongolia on Doing Business 2010

The room was packed. About forty people, mostly journalists, came to the launch of Doing Business 2010 by video conference with Washington and several other East Asian and Pacific countries.

Mongolia is going through a lot of economic changes. It was hard-hit by the global economic crisis, which devastated commodity prices and strained the banking system. Mining could also transform the economy if negotiations between the government and Rio Tinto, a global mining corporation, are successful. Mongolia has a chance to show that it’s a good place to do business and to invest in. It would be good, then, to see signs of interest in reform by journalists and the public.