Monday, January 25, 2010

OECD vs Fund's Relationship Management

OECD (2008) compares OECD peer reviews with IMF Board discussions and describes differences in focus, in methods of analysis and consequently, in the nature of interactions. The IMF process is characterized as a higher frequency exercise with a shorter-term focus and notes that the country is not necessarily expected to endorse the policy recommendations of a surveillance report, nor does it have much latitude to change or remove topics from a Staff Report. The OECD, on the other hand, engages in a much more intensive exchange with country authorities, both in missions and at headquarters when finalizing its Economic Surveys. It engages in a full day of discussions with the authorities joined by officials from other countries who contribute to the debate with their policy experience, after which the Secretariat works with the country subject to peer review over the course of a full day to finalize the document for publication. Thygesen acknowledges that this buy-in may result in a reduction of clarity in issues or key messages in the report. He also suggests that the peer review process only works well if there is a high and matched level of expertise brought by country representatives around the table so that the authorities undergoing the peer review can truly benefit from the discussion. OECD (2007) discusses the prerequisites of value sharing, mutual trust and credibility in the process adding that the peer review is as effective as the “peer pressure” stemming from the reviewer countries, and the willingness of the reviewed country to accept it

-A Comparative Study on Relationship Management

Another Practitioner- Rakesh Mohan's Eichengreen challenge

Monetary Policy in a Globalized Economy- A Practitioner's View

Rakesh Mohan

Ashok Mody review;
In a recent comment, Barry Eichengreen (2009) says that economists are subject to fads and trends because the penalties for departing from social norms are large. Hence, even though the tools and perspectives to question the prevailing normative view are available, the incentives to adopt them are minimal...

Rakesh Mohan sees such pragmatism as the key role of a practising economist. It is in the practice of economics that the rubber, so to speak, hits the road, the theories are tested, the validity of parameters is assessed, and the cold reality of politics is faced. He speaks of the recurring conflicts in objectives faced by policymakers. In resolving these conflicts, he questions and prods, often pushing back on views widely held by academic and other practising economists. In his practice, Mohan reports, the Eichengreen challenge was always present. But because the risk of being marginalised is high, bucking the orthodoxy requires clarity of perspective and determined persistence. Both of these are amply in view in this book, which brings the speeches Mohan delivered as deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from the early years of this decade, along with an extensive introduction and an “after word” that reports on the ongoing global financial and economic crisis...

For students of the Indian economy who also seek a special understanding of India’s monetary and financial policies, this book will be an invaluable guide. It presents a careful and current account of developments with an analytical eye, placed in the context and language of ongoing international policy debates. For readers seeking to assess the pulse and rhythm of India’s ginger steps from the safety of domestic finance to the choppier waters of international finance, the book offers a calibrated prognosis.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Development Jobs

World Bank Job Offer: Public Financial Management Specialist
The closing date:February 14, 2010


MIGA Professionals Program (MPP)
Looking for a Risk Officer, Accounting Office, and Underwriter

Marco-Fiscal Advisor- Afghanistan

Deloitte
Apply By: 11 February 2010
The Advisor will:

* Review appropriateness of MOF macroeconomic model for macro-fiscal analysis and forecasting.
* Review the process for integrating the MOF macroeconomic model to the revenue projections model and medium term fiscal framework (MTFF)
* Document data requirements for model and assist MOF in developing MOU's with DAB and statistical agency for the periodic provision of updated data for the model.
* Develop manuals and training materials to assist in building the knowledge and expertise of MOF staff in use of the Macroeconomic model.
* Provide coaching, formal training and mentoring to MOF staff in the use of the model.


Institutional Development Expert - Sri Lanka
Sinclair Knight Merz
Apply By: 20 January 2010

Namibia - Support to the National Planning Commission Secretariat
ECORYS
Apply By: 11 February 2010

ADB has a lot of anticipated vacancies for economists and PFM experts

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Blog of the Day

Running a Hospital- President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston

Who is Chalmers Johnson?


The idea of the Developmental State is most closely associated with Chalmers Johnson and his seminal analysis of Japan’s very rapid, highly successful post-war reconstruction and reindustrialization. Johnson’s central contention was that Japan’s quite remarkable and historically unparalleled industrial renaissance was neither a fluke nor inevitable, but a consequence of the efforts of a Developmental State. A developmental state was one that was determined to influence the direction and pace of economic development by directly intervening in the development process, rather than relying on the uncoordinated influence of market forces to allocate resources. The developmental state took it upon itself the task of establishing substantive social and economic goals with which to guide the process of development and social mobilization. The most important of these goals, in Japan’s case, of course was the reconstruction of its industrial capacity, a process made easier by widespread consensus about the importance of industrial development.
The emphasis has to be placed on the influence over the direction and pace of development by directly intervening in the development process, rather than relying on the uncoordinated influence of market forces.

- Address by the Minister in The Presidency: National Planning Commission, Trevor Manuel, at the Wits Graduate School of Public Development Management

For Discussion: Where's South Africa heading?

Assorted

Landsburg's Heroes of All Time

66 percent of the time
And it also occurred me that while students see the professor while he or she is teaching, they only witness about 66% of what goes into teaching.


Medical Statistics Don't Always Mean What They Seem to Mean

Paul Romer's Errors

Experiments in industrial policy
As much as fixed costs matter, the real barrier to firm growth in poor countries could be management. A good manager is partly one with training, experience, and a sense of best practice. A lot of a factory’s success comes down to management as a technology, though. Organizing a production floor, ensuring quality and efficient production: these are less a product of a single manager’s talent and more the product of decades of trial and error in manufacturing plants around the world. The problem: if you are running a firm in India or Mexico or elsewhere, the best practices probably haven’t filtered through.


2009 Quality of Life Index

Balance of Payments

Saturday, January 9, 2010

The Budget Director's Love Life


There is something that a lot of people in Washington find shocking about this story, which is why we keep talking about it,” Ms. Ein said. “This is a person who seems so controlled in his professional life.” Indeed, someone who carries neat to-do lists in his breast pocket and a copy on his desk of Epictetus, the Greek philosopher who preached self-discipline. “And yet he’s so messy in his private life. This is an a-ha moment.”

This goes to another obvious — and recurring — question: whether someone whose personal life has become so complicated is really fit to tackle one of the most demanding, important and stressful jobs in the universe. “Frankly I don’t see how Orszag can balance three families and the national budget,” wrote Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post.

-If Peter Orszag Is So Smart, What Will He Do Now?

Monday, January 4, 2010

Assorted

Islamic Credit Default Swaps

Pop singer makes two excellent points on development


What’s the United States Worth? $1.4 Quadrillion

Soviet Growth & American Textbooks

The flow of economic thought – Jan Tinbergen vs Milton Friedman
;
It is a little superfluous for any foreigner to come to Rotterdam to lecture about economics at all. I feel a bit like a 17th century New England smuggler lecturing on seamanship to Admiral Tromp. The trade in economics nowadays is as much the other way: we send our young men to Rotterdam to learn, not our middle-aged professors to teach. Indeed some of our best middle-aged professors are named Koopmans and Houthakker! I suppose the logic of the situation is that I am not import at all; I am to be processed and re-exported, like cocoa beans.”
-Robert M. Solow in 1963 when visiting the Rotterdam School of Economics.

Books about Iceland

Why Iceland?: How One of the World’s Smallest Countries Became the Meltdown’s Biggest Casualty by Asgeir Jonsson

Frozen Assets: How I Lived Iceland’s Boom and Bust, by Armann Thorvaldsson,

Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island
-Roger Boyes