Boris Pleskovic

Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1999

Departamento de Economia - Faculdade de Ciencias e Letras - UNESP -14800-901 - Araraquara - SP

Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 2004 : accelerating development

Presenting the proceedings of the May 2003 World Bank Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE), the volume imparts new research findings and discussions on key policy issues related to poverty reduction by eminent scholars and practitioners from around the world. Topics include Fostering Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Growth; Challenges of Development in Lagging Regions; Participation, Inclusion and Results and Scaling Up and Evaluation. Contributors to the volume include, Nicholas Stern, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank; Azim Hasham Premji, Chairman of Bangalores Wipro Corporation; Francois Bourguignon of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Possiy, France; Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University; Justin Lin of Hong Kong University; Rakesh Mohan, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India; Jean Philippe Platteau of the University of Namur, Belgium; Karen Polenske of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; T. N. Srinivasan, of Yale University; and Anthony Venables of the London School of Economics.

Capacity Building in Economics: Education and Research in Transition Economies

The development of the institutional capacity to create and evaluate economic policies remains a critical need-and constraint-in most transition economies if they are to complete the successful passage to fully functioning market economies. To take an active role in the transition process, economic policymakers, business leaders, government officials, and others need a thorough grounding in market-based economics. This requires strengthening economics education and providing support for qualified economists to teach economics at all levels and to carry out high-quality research and policy analysis. Although the education systems in a handful of countries have already risen to the challenge, in many other transition countries, the structure of educational and research institutes remains grounded in the Communist model. This paper presents findings from a comprehensive study assessing the state of economics education and research in 24 countries in East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. While 20 countries were initially included because preliminary assessments showed that they lacked the capability to offer high-quality economics education, four additional countries-the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine-were included to highlight five centers of excellence that they already host. Based on the experience of these successful centers, the studys findings, and information gathered from a series of donor meetings in Berlin, New York, and Washington, D.C., this paper presents an approach to building new indigenous capacity for teaching and research on market-based economics in regions where the need is particularly critical-the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Southeast Europe.

Financial policies in socialist countries in transition

One legacy of central planning, says the author, is that the financial systems in the transitional economies are even less developed than in many developing countries. He contends that the main goal of financial reform in these economies should be to make passive financial systems active - to make financial systems participate actively in the economy, as they do in market economies. For this to happen, the transitional economies must develop banking systems that allocate credit efficiently. Commercial banks must screen borrowers and monitor and discipline enterprises. The role of the government or the central bank should be limited to regulation and supervision. Most transitional economies have adopted a gradual approach to reforming their financial systems, maintaining the banking systems passive role. But banking reform in Eastern Europe cannot wait for enterprise restructuring and privatization, because both banks and state enterprises are burdened with inherited bad debts that endanger their solvency and hence that of the economy. The financial restructuring of banks and enterprises should be undertaken simultaneously, says the author, and should start early in the transition. Commercial banks should play an active role in the financial restructuring of enterprises. Governments must take responsibility (through the budget) for the debts of nonviable enterprises in a transparent manner and for the recapitalization of banks after their clean-up. Otherwise the healthy segments of the commercial sectors will have to carry the burden of financial restructuring, which will slow down the transition. Early in the transition, attention must also be paid to improving the system of payments, demonopolizing banking, changing the structure of ownership (including privatization), and introducing market-based financial legislation. The speed of financial reform will depend greatly on the availability of skilled banking professionals, on access to technical assistance from abroad, fiscal constraints, and of course on specific country circumstances. For example, for most countries of the former Soviet Union - except, for the Baltic states - a prerequisite to successful financial restructuring is macroeconomic stabilization and the reduction of high inflation rates. The most important lesson from countries further along in reform is that financial reform should not be delayed but should start as soon as possible. Delays reduce living standards (burdening the healthy parts of the economy with direct taxes or high financial costs), discourage small-scale entrepreneurs, inhibit the entry of new forms, and cause the economy to stagnate further.

Regional development in a socialist, developing, and multinational country : the case of Yugoslavia

The paper presents an overview of the problems, policies, and shortcomings of regional planning practices in Yugoslavia and makes recommendations for future regional planning policy with respect to inter-regional inequalities. Since World War II the government has invested considerable effort and resources experimenting with various policies to reduce spatial disparities among its principal regions. As a socialist country, Yugoslavia could presumably use direct control of interregional allocation of investment funds and skilled labor to avoid the classic pattern of regional growth. However, various institutional problems, conflicts between goals and policies, demographic characteristics, and the lack of adequate conceptual structure for regional development policies have limited the governments success in reducing absolute and relative income disparities.

Creating Partnerships for Capacity Building in Developing Countries: The Experience of the World Bank

The authors discuss a variety of experiences in a number of transition, and developing countries to build institutional capacity for economics education. A flexible approach met with some success. The approach uses partnerships that combine the often different needs of a number of private donors, with the World Bank on the supply side. Much of the success was due to adopting each effort to the individual country situation. The authors also provide a brief summary of five academic institutions, and four research networks in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Regional Science and Development

This issue of the Ititeniatioiial Regional Science Review presents selected papers and comments that were presented at the World Bank‘s Sixth Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, held April 28-29, 1994, in Washington, D.C. They were published in the Proceedings of tlie World Batik Atitiiral Coifererice 011 Developtiietit Ecotiottiics (Bruno and Pleskovic 1995). The Bank conference series is intended to challenge and expand our understanding of development policy in practice. Two themes of the 1994 World Bank conference were economic geography (particularly the dynamics of disparate regional development) and international migration. The two themes bring together macroeconomic, regional, and microeconomic approaches to practical issues in development policy and stimulate debate between regional scientists and development economists. Development economists and international financial institutions often focus on macroeconomic and sectoral issues of development, or on individual development projects, and neglect regional and spatial aspects of development. Regional economists and regional scientists, on the other hand, rarely work with the problems and policy issues of economic development more broadly, concentrating instead on theoretical and modeling aspects of regional science in developed countries.

Regional Development and Transition in the Former Soviet Union: A Comment

The authors from Russia and Ukraine in this symposium provide insightful criticism of the old system and raise important questions about future directions of regional development. Sometimes, however, their ideas still reflect old ways of thinking. Particularly important for regional development is the future of banking. Competitive branch banking offers the best mechanism for serving the financial needs of regions, but several problems must be solved to establish an efficient banking system. The transfer of knowledge and experience from market-based economies will be expedited by an increase in exchange programs joint research, and cooperation between Western regional scientists and economists and those in the former Soviet Union.

Berlin Workshop Series 2009 : Spatial Disparities and Development Policy

The Berlin workshop series 2009 presents a selection of papers from meetings held on September 30-October 2, 2007, at the tenth annual Berlin workshop, jointly organized by InWent-Capacity Building International, Germany, and the World Bank in preparation for the World Banks World Development Report (WDR) 2009. The workshop brings diverse perspectives from outside the World Bank, providing a forum in which to exchange ideas and engage in debate relevant to development of the WDR. The report will accordingly have three parts, each describing, explaining, or drawing lessons from the spatial transformations that have been observed in both developed and developing countries. The first section of the report will be factual and present the stylized facts on economic concentration and welfare disparities, for both developing and developed countries, over the last two centuries. The second part of the report will identify the main drivers of these changes, distilling the insights provided by the advances in economic thought over the last two decades. The third section of the report will discuss the policy implications, in essence identifying the public policy priorities that help countries to realize the immediate economic benefits of greater concentration and the social and long-term economic benefits of moderate spatial disparities. In essence, the report will emphasize that neighborhoods are important for development. This is true for cities, for regions, and for countries: it is difficult for a city to prosper in the middle of a squalid countryside, it is difficult for a province to prosper rapidly when other provinces in the country are squalid, and it is difficult for a country to prosper for long when the countries around it are mired in squalor. The report will propose that the solution for cities, regions, and countries is to invest in neighborhoods. The principle is to deepen integration and not to attempt isolation.

Annual World Bank conference on development economics global 2010 : lessons from East Asia and the Global financial crisis

The Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) is a forum for discussion and debate of important policy issues facing developing countries. The conferences emphasize the contribution that empirical economic research can make to understanding development processes and to formulating sound development policies. Conference papers are written by researchers in and outside the World Bank. This years ABCDE included sessions on the following themes: industrial policy and development; social capital, institutions, and development; financial crisis and regulation; the road to a sustainable global economic system; and innovation and competition. In light of the global financial crisis, speakers touched on fundamental questions: what caused the current crisis, and how can the world economy recover? Are the standard prescriptions of development economics adequate to the task? Should developing countries alter their basic growth strategies? What is the proper role of the state? Should developing countries reexamine their commitment to free trade? How can global imbalances be rectified (especially between China and the United States)? Within the globalized financial system, how can regulation are improved? In attempting to answer these questions, many of the speakers searched for solutions in the lessons offered by the experience of Korea and other East Asian countries, which reacted with varying degrees of success to the financial crisis of the late 1990s. This volume includes selected papers from the conference as well as keynote addresses by SaKong, chairman of the Korean G-20 summit coordinating committee, and two distinguished economists: Anne Krueger, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University, and Simon Johnson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.