Events « GDNet Blog

“Understanding and Avoiding the Oil Curse in the Arab World” was the theme for the ERF & AFESD Conference

January 23, 2012 by zeinabsabet Leave a Comment

Organized jointly by the Economic Research Forum and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, the conference “Understanding and Avoiding the Oil Curse in the Arab World” was held in Kuwait on January 15-16, 2012 and convened around 100 regional and international researchers.

Eleven countries of the twenty-two members of the League of the Arab States are oil exporters and they account for approximately 55 percent of global oil reserves and 29 percent of natural gas reserves. The hydrocarbon sector dominates these economies, contributing about 50 percent to GDP and 80 percent to government revenues. Neighboring countries are also impacted by oil, through its impact on labor earnings, capital mobility and trade in goods and services between oil and non-oil exporters. If the region does not harness the power of natural resources, it is likely to experience extreme volatility, post-boom growth collapses, Dutch disease, weakened institutions and rent-seeking behaviors: the so called “oil curse.” The reverse also holds.

In this context ERF has initiated a major research undertaking on “understanding and avoiding the oil curse in the Arab world,” which aims at understanding the macroeconomic challenges related to oil dependency as well as exploring options to address those challenges including fiscal, financial, monetary and exchange rate policies.

Bringing together renowned academics and policy makers, the primary objective of this conference was to initiate discussions on the macroeconomic challenges posed by oil dependency in Arab countries, and of policies for harnessing the power of natural resources. The conference was preceded by a workshop, which was held in Cairo on October 7- 8 2011 to discuss draft papers.

To view posts from the Conference, check the ERF blog

Download the conference agenda

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Filed under Events Tagged with AFESD, Arab World, Economic and Social Development, ERF, oil, Oil Curse, Oil Dependency

The psychology of scarcity: A very different look at poverty

November 13, 2011 by zeinabsabet Leave a Comment

The fifth and last plenary session of the LACEA 16th Annual Meeting was dedicated to “The Psychology of Scarcity: A Very Different Look at Poverty”. Sendhill Mullainathan, Harvard University, delivered a thought provoking a new view on the cognitive capabilities of the poor. He argued that they might seem to be cognitive constrained not because they are poor, but because since they face scarcity their mind is more focused on their immediate problems and they do not excel at other tasks; their mind being fully loaded.

Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University

Filed under Events Tagged with LACEA, LAMES, poverty

Steven Berry & Jean Tirole at the LACEA 16th Annual Meeting

November 13, 2011 by zeinabsabet Leave a Comment

“Inversion, Indices and Instruments: Identifying Differentiated Products Demand” was the topic of the third plenary at the LACEA 16th Annual Meeting. Steven Berry, Yale University, held a discussion on how the new economic thinking centered around differentiated products should be taken on and some of its implications.

Steven Berry, Yale University

Jean Tirole, Toulouse School of Economics, addressed the “Commonality of Information, Tranching and Liquidity” at the fourth plenary. He developed a rigorous presentation of his robust econometric model to reach certain facts such as that if future illiquidity is expected, it will generate illiquidity today.

Jean Tirole, Toulouse School of Economics

Filed under Events Tagged with development, economic development, gdnet, LACEA, latin america, research

“Productive knowledge” and “the nature of liquidity provision” at the LACEA 16th Annual Meeting

November 11, 2011 by zeinabsabet Leave a Comment

Ricardo Hausmann, Harvard University

The LACEA meeting started on Thursday 10th with LACEA’s Presidential Address. The first plenary was dedicated to Ricardo Hausmann, Harvard University, who made a presentation on how wealth and development are related to the ability of a country to make more products, which in turn is based on how many different types of knowledge the country has and how these can be put together.

Bengt Holmström, MIT

“The Nature of Liquidity Provision: When Ignorance Is Bliss” was the topic discussed at the second plenary by Bengt Holmstrom, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Filed under Events Tagged with economic development, knowledge, LACEA

LACEA 16th Annual Meeting – Santiago, Chile

November 10, 2011 by zeinabsabet Leave a Comment

With almost 40 key speakers and over 300 contributed papers in 101 sessions covering all areas of economics, the 16^th Annual LACEA Meeting 2011 will be jointly organized with the 26^th Annual Meeting of the Latin American Chapter of the Econometric Society (LAMES) in Santiago, Chile, from November 10^th to 12^th and will be hosted by Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.

The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association or Asociación de Economía de América Latina y el Caribe (LACEA) is an international association of economists with common research interests in Latin America. Founded in 1992, LACEA aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas among economists and policymakers. Its purpose is to encourage greater professional interaction among economists concerned with Latin American and Caribbean policy and research problems, without regard to political, ideological or methodological orientation.

LACEA is generously supported by grants from the Global Development Network and the World Bank’s Development Grant Facility. LACEA’s funding has been used to reach out to minorities and economists of under-represented countries of the region, as well as to bring policy-makers closer to the Association’s activities under GDN´s objective of bridging research and policy.

A special GDNet-LACEA session will take place take place during the meeting. Entitled “Researchers and policymakers: Bridging the gap”, the session aims at motivating a debate around the factors that promote or hinder the transfer of knowledge from the academic/research field to the policy arena and what concrete actions could be implemented to further the interaction between both.

The specific objectives of the session will center on identifying:

The main facilitators and barriers to improving the transfer of knowledge from research to policymaking, and to the generation of awareness and interest among decision makers on the importance of academic input into public policies
Concrete actions that both researchers and policymakers can implement to promote agenda-harmonization between them
Specific steps that organizations, such as GDN, could carry out to support the incorporation of policy research into policymaking