We are going to be away for a while. The "Fridays Academy" and other topics will be back in this blog  very soon.
Have a nice Summer.

The International Poverty Centre has just published a one-pager on the Feminization of Poverty, by Marcelo Madeiros and  Joana Costa.

The “feminization of poverty” is an idea that dates back to the 1970s. It was popularized at the start of the 1990s, not least in research by United Nation agencies. The concept has various meanings, some of which are not entirely consistent with its implicit notion of change. We propose a definition that is in line with many recent studies in the field: the feminization of poverty is a change in poverty levels that is biased against women or female-headed households.

 

 Read more on Gender and Poverty in our current Fridays Academy series, every Friday in this blog.

The World Bank is accepting on-line applications for the 2009 Young Professionals Program selection.

Deadline to apply is July 15th, 2008

The World Bank is accepting on-line applications for the 2009 Young Professionals Program selection.

Deadline to apply is July 15th, 2008

Introduction 

In classical economic theory, the consumer is assumed to be a rational decision maker who makes choices to maximize his utility given his budget constraints. The consumer is also assumed to make intertemporal choices about savings, education, work effort, career and health care, after weighing in the opportunity cost of his funds. The classical economic model is modeled on the basic economic principles that consumers are rational and that they are equipped with immutable logic to further their best interests. As a natural corollary, classical economic thought would predict that consumers would save for their retirement, take only loans that they can afford to repay regularly over their lifetime, and consume the quantity of goods and services that balances their intertemporal budget constraints.  

What then explains the apparently illogical behavior of consumers tossing coins into a slot machine without having any expectations of winning, or splurging their savings on holidays they can ill afford rather than saving for retirement, or even, successively refinancing their homes and indulging in conspicuous consumption while knowing fully well that either the unpredictable housing or labor markets makes repayment of debts very difficult? These decisions of consumers are not rational purchasing decisions and contrary to classical economic thought. This has led to an emerging field in economic thought and research, called neuroeconomics, that suggests that the interplay between the various centers of the brain play a part in the financial decisions that people make. 

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The first Development Marketplace for the African Diaspora in Europe (D-MADE) ended in Brussels last week, awarding close to a million dollars for sixteen investment projects in Africa. The winning projects will be implemented in 11 African countries, including Mali (4), Cote d'Ivoire (2) Benin (2) and one each for Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

The winners were selected from a group of 68 finalists who presented projects that a 24-person jury deemed innovative, sustainable, replicable and based on sound business principles. The D-MADE initiative was launched in 2007 to allow entrepreneurs from the African Diaspora in Europe to participate in the development of their countries.

 The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it? By Paul Collier. Oxford University Press, 2007
 
 The main thesis of the book is that globalization has been beneficial to a majority of the people in the developed and developing world, except for a large group of small countries in Africa, Caribbean ad Pacific countries, which comprise of a billion people (out of the total world population of about 6.5 billion). These billion people are being increasingly marginalized by globalization. For example, average per capita GDP growth of the economies of the bottom billion was 0.5% in 1970s, 0.4% in 1980s and negative 0.50% in 1990s. In comparison, per capita GDP growth in other developing countries increased from 2.5% in 1970s to 4% each in 1980s and 1990s. So there is big time divergence in income between the bottom billion and rest of the world population.
 

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